Magnolia
by princesswingnut
Summary: PostParasite fic, ensemble. ...If you guys still can't get to the last chapters, go to heroesfictionDOTawardspaceDOTcom, they're all up there now... ALTERNATE ENDING!
1. Chapter 1

Mohinder had a vague notion that he ought to save Peter Petrelli.

He needed to be saved because a psychopathic serial killer was opening his head up like a can of Sunkist peaches. The notion was vague because Mohinder was dying.

He watched his blood drip onto them from the ceiling (where he was currently pinned by a large ugly piece of metal, _pinned_, literally—he imagined his headstone inscription would be fairly amusing, _Here lies Mohinder Suresh, loving son, killed by a bunch of forks_), a horrifying thick rain that dripped down the back of Sylar's neck to pool with Peter's on the floor.

He was losing it—his vision was striping over with black, or maybe that was just the pain. Either way, he started counting down his life in seconds.

There was no tunnel of light; instead there was a sucking black-hole nothingness, a thoroughly uncomforting void. He went to it anyway. Whatever lay ahead, it had to be better than a world where murderers stabbed you to the ceiling.

Mohinder was no superhero. Let Peter Petrelli save himself.

---

Peter had discovered a small problem with his powers. He'd thought he had everything figured when he realized that, to call up people's powers, he only had to call up the emotions he associated with them. Easy, he'd thought, he was good with emotions. However, he'd hit an unexpected roadblock.

In retrospect, he should have known that something was wrong the minute he walked into the apartment. The whole place had been wrecked, torn apart in a way he hadn't seen since some of Nathan's old college parties. Considering that Mohinder Suresh didn't seem much of a partying type, he should have done the smart thing: call the police—or better, call Nathan. Instead, he'd wandered in to the place like a particularly stupid sacrificial lamb, and gotten jumped for it.

Now he was in trouble. Sylar had him pinned to the back wall with crushing force that felt like it would cave his ribs at any moment, and he was having a hard time thinking of _anything_, much less specific emotional responses. The pain of Sylar slicing into his head snapped him into focus, but given the situation, at first all he could manage to pull up were powers from stressful situations. His hands began to fade from view, going invisible grain by grain—no good, Sylar could still hold him even if he couldn't see him. Mind reading was equally useless, and not a little scary, and he discarded it just as fast, thoughts already going blurry-skittery from pain. He figured he had about ten seconds until he was dead. Telekinesis—now _that_ could actually be helpful.

Peter _shoved_ out from himself, flinging a surprised Sylar into a desk at the other end of the room. The pressure on his chest released immediately, and he fell unsteadily onto the floor. The pain in his head was brutal, screaming-white-hot, and he wondered dizzily how close he'd come to dying. _Claire_, he thought hysterically, forcing himself to call up images of the sweet, savable cheerleader. He snatched her 'file card' out of his mind, fumbled it, felt himself healing awkwardly. _Not so good, Peter,_ he told himself, _that's probably going to leave a scar_.

But he had more important things to worry about—for example, the fact that Sylar had quite recovered from the collision with the desk and was coming after him with that look in his eyes like he was terribly hungry and Peter was the last chocolate éclair in the box. As he closed on Peter, shards of twisted metal flew up behind him, hovering alarmingly at shoulder-level for a few moments before flying at him like demented, oddly-shaped bullets. No longer off-guard and no longer being sliced open, Peter was able to bat them away with little difficulty, sending them clattering harmlessly into the walls. Sylar's eyes flew open with astonishment, then shuttered down to narrow slits, bright with prying interest.

"So _that's _what it is," he breathed. "I couldn't see it…it all makes sense now." He took a step closer, avarice coming off him in waves.

Peter backed away, eyeing the distance to the door. "You're crazy," he said uncertainly.

Sylar smiled to himself, raising a particularly wicked piece of metal with a flick of his finger. "I'm not," he said. "It's an evolutionary imperative. No hard feelings, but I'm going to need what you can do." He sent the shrapnel slicing at Peter's chest with such vicious force that he only just stopped it in time, inches away from his heart. Sylar bent his head and glowered at his impromptu spear with a vengeance, forcing it, edging it millimeter by millimeter forward. Peter's eyes widened as the point drove nearer, realizing that he couldn't stop it, couldn't even hold it still—Sylar was simply better, more practiced. He was going to win.

Not having any desire to end up like Mohinder, he swiftly decided on a new course of action. He dropped his resistance without warning, and then ducked as the piece of metal snapped over his head as if flung by a slingshot, burying half its length into the wall behind him. At the same time, he grabbed the nearest object, a sad, broken two-legged stool, and threw it at Sylar—who, not expecting a physical attack, took it ungracefully upside the head and dropped, leaving Peter free to sprint for the nearest door.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the door to outside—Sylar still stood between him and the exit, and he didn't think much of his chances of getting past before the man recovered. A smart move, as it turned out—just as he pulled open the door, he felt something slice down his shoulder blade—Sylar was already back up and implacably determined not to let him get away.

He managed to get into the room—the bathroom, as it turned out—and get the door locked behind him before Sylar caught up, jumping back as the door shuddered dangerously under Sylar's weight.

"Come _out!_" he screamed, voice flecked with rabid madness. "You think this will stop me?"

Peter slid down the door, touching his badly-healed cut with one hand, trying to stop himself thinking about how close he'd come to being very dead. _There's no time for that_, he told himself sharply. _If you go to pieces, you _will _be dead._ He fumbled his cell phone out of his pocket (unbroken, remarkably), dialing the number that had always meant 'emergency' to him.

He pressed it tensely to his ear as it rang, forcing himself to ignore the shredding sounds of the door being cut away. There was a click as the line connected, and then his brother's voice came across. "Hello?"

"Nathan!"

Nathan's voice went sharp with concern, immediately picking up on Peter's panic. "Peter? What's wrong? Where are you?"

"Nathan, I went to see Suresh, but he's dead—the guy who wanted to kill Claire, he's _here_, Nathan, he killed Mohinder and he tried to kill me—he's right outside the door and I can't get away—"

Peter could hear Nathan scrambling on the other end, a sharp series of steps as he ran down the stairs. "Stay calm, man, I'll be right there," he assured Peter, protective worry making his words tight, clipped. "Tell me exactly where you are. How long have you got?"

The wood of the door broke under the strain of Sylar's attacks, opening a splintered hole above Peter's head. "I don't know, Nathan. I'm in Mohinder's apartment—I think I can hold him for a while, but you know I don't really know what I'm doing."

"Just hang in there, Peter. I'm coming."

"_Hurry_." As Peter shut his phone, Sylar's hand reached through the hole, groping blindly for purchase on his side of the door. Peter backpedaled quickly, standing and moving as far away as the small room would allow. The hand pulled out of view, and there was a disquieting silence from the other room. Then, to his horror, the doorknob began bubbling, melting out of shape to drip down the door in coppery globules. Worse, the hinges followed suit, the door swaying perilously in its frame as they liquefied.

Peter pulled in a deep, meditation-calming breath, forcing himself to stand straight up, hands flexing convulsively as he waited for Sylar to come at him. His mind ran through the list of his acquired abilities like a filmstrip, searching for some way to get out of this situation with the top of his head still attached. _Healing, mind-reading, invisibility­, painting—why_ didn't he have anything _offensive_, something he could use that Sylar didn't have, something he wouldn't be expecting?

The door fell away, and Sylar pressed in close behind it, nearly frothing with frustrated power-lust. He flung a hand towards Peter, and blue-white mist raced sprang out of it, racing towards Peter with fanatic intention that nearly matched its creator. Peter had only a split second to be nervous and puzzled before it hit him, freeze-fusing his arm to the wall from the elbow down. As Sylar advanced on him, he tried to pull away, but the encasing ice was surprisingly strong. He made a flash decision based on this discovery, and turned it against its wielder—concentrating with a focus born of impending danger, he built an ice-wall up from the floor, closing himself off from Sylar quickly enough that the man could only snarl with murderous pique and smash his hand against the barrier.

Peter immediately turned to his arm, trying to figure how to release it before Sylar thought of some new way to get at him. Too late—he only had time to see the walls teeter dangerously on either side before they came down altogether, breaking apart and slamming in on him with all the force of Sylar's homicidal intent. He threw his free arm over his head, but it wasn't enough to protect against the thousands of bricks coming down. He felt something sharp strike his temple, and that was it—he blacked out.


	2. Chapter 2

_You have bent your shoulders/_

_To hold the weight of the world/_

_You will surely shatter/_

Nathan made it into the apartment a few steps ahead of the SWAT team—they'd tried very hard to make him stay out of the building, but he'd informed them with icy, politics-born firmness that his brother was up there, possibly being murdered, and he would be damned if he was going to sit around doing nothing. Now, he'd almost wished he had; the sight of Sylar pulling his brother's limp, bloody form out of a pile of rubble was nearly enough to make his heart trip-hammer itself into an early death.

The SWAT team burst into the room behind him, training their guns on Sylar and demanding loudly that he step away from Peter. The man's head snapped up to them, surprised, angry at the interruption, pupils dilated so wide that his eyes appeared shark-black. He didn't release his hold on Peter's collar, and the SWAT team was apparently not inclined to give him a second chance—they pushed past Nathan, took swift aim, and shot. Sylar dropped Peter as the bullets bit into his chest, and Nathan's familial sensibilities screamed to see his brother crumple brokenly onto the bricks, wanting to go to him but not daring, not while Sylar was still on the scene, stumbling back from the impact of the gunshots.

Astoundingly, he was still alive, still standing, even, after taking what had surely been half a dozen bullets. However, the SWAT team didn't have time to ponder a strategy in which guns were not the solution—he scrambled over the ruins of the apartment and out the fallen back wall, disappearing into the next room with half the team hot on his heels. Nathan went straight to Peter, dropping to his knees and pulling Peter off the destroyed wall, checking for a pulse (yes), checking if he was okay (no). His body showed a dark chart of damage, cuts and bruises, mainly on his head, shoulders, and chest, which had taken the brunt of the room's collapse. His right wrist was swollen and oddly twisted--Nathan was only a lawyer, but he knew it was broken, and from the blood on Peter's mouth, he figured there was probably some internal bleeding as well.

"You," he snapped at one of the SWAT men who had stayed behind. "Get a doctor."

"What?" the man asked confusedly, thrown by the order delivered with such brusque surety from a person he didn't know.

"I said, _get a doctor_!" Nathan yelled, causing the man to jump and hurry out of the room.

Nathan cradled Peter's unresponsive form in his arms, wishing he knew how to pray. "Come on, Pete," he murmured. "Stay with me, man. I need you. You're the only part of our family that was ever any good. If you die, we're all going to hell." He pushed the hair back from Peter's face, brushing it away from a scar he didn't remember, a white line slashing down into his eyebrow.

In the back of his head, from the corner where he'd exiled the politician part of himself, a voice cut in. _Maybe it would be better if he died_. He studiously ignored the thought, but it was no use—he'd let the shameful-but-necessary part of him get too strong lately, with the election coming so close. _He's always causing trouble anyway, he's got a talent for making a scene at the exact worst moment. The headlines would be spectacular: Congressional Candidate's Brother Murdered by Serial Killer. There's no publicity like sensationalism. _

He bent his head over Peter, determinedly quashing the insidious thoughts. He _needed_ Peter. Peter was his soul, and possibly the only person in the world who loved him unconditionally, without strings or fine print. He would not let his brother die.

As if prompted by that thought, Peter suddenly surged to life, shaking but conscious and getting blood all over Nathan's expensive suit. Then, as he bent double, coughs tearing through his body, he began suddenly, miraculously _healing._ Nathan blinked twice to be sure that those long campaign hours hadn't finally gotten to him, but the sight didn't change—Peter's cuts were pulling themselves together and disappearing, bruises fading into healthy skin.

After his initial reaction ("thank God") his scandal-honed instincts prompted him to grab Peter and pull him into a hug, effectively blocking him from the rest of the room.

"Nathan—what—?" Peter said confusedly.

"Don't move, Pete," Nathan whispered without changing his expression. "I'm hiding you until you stop looking like a really good subject for scientific testing, okay?"

Peter glanced down at his disappearing injuries. "Oh—right." He returned the hug, wrapping his arms around Nathan and burying his head in his shoulder as he hadn't done since he was seven. Nathan felt a sudden upsurge of protectiveness, flashing back to the days when Peter was always getting bullied and he was always saving him. In a way, he thought, it was happening all over again, and he was surprised to find that he still felt it was his job to stand between Peter and the world. Twenty-six years old, he thought wryly, and Peter was still getting bullied.

The SWAT man he'd sent off came back into the room, followed by a harassed-looking team of emergency medics. Looking proud at having accomplished his mission, the man pointed them in Nathan's direction, but he waved them away with his best 120-watt smile.

"Sorry to have bothered you," he said, charmingly apologetic. "I thought my brother was hurt, but as you can see, he's fine." Peter gave them a smile and a wave, demonstrating his 'fine'-ness on Nathan's cue. "I just saw blood and overreacted, you know how it is. I'm sorry to have wasted your time."

Annoyance soothed by his deft charisma, the medics filed back out of the room, and Nathan breathed an unobtrusive sigh of relief through his teeth.

"Well, that takes care of that," he said, helping Peter to his feet. "We're going home."

"'We'?" Peter questioned. Nathan had never liked Peter's apartment, accustomed as he was to courtrooms and penthouses. For years, he'd been trying to persuade Peter to let him find something else, but Peter knew better than to take anything from his brother. With Nathan, everything had strings, hooks—even love.

"Oh, we're not going back to that rat hole you call an apartment," Nathan said authoritatively, taking Peter's elbow and steering him towards the door. "You're coming to stay with me and Heidi."

"Nathan—" he protested.

"I'm not asking you, Pete, I'm telling you," Nathan said shortly. "I do not trust law enforcement to get that psycho, and as long as he's loose, I need you where I can keep you alive."

All the fight went out of Peter as the last hour came slamming back to him, and suddenly he was shaking, breathing too fast. "Whoa," Nathan said, alarmed. "Stay with me, man, you're going into shock." He thought about calling the medics back, but instead he walked faster, feeling that everything would be all right if he could just get _home_.


	3. Chapter 3

_Run where you'll be safe/_

_Through the garden gates/_

_To the shelter of/_

_Magnolia/_

When Nathan got to his house, his mother was waiting for him with an expression so white and drawn that, for a moment, he was concerned for her health. But when she saw Peter, the color poured rapidly back into her face and she flew forward to hug him, throwing her arms around his neck.

"Peter, I was so _worried,_" she said, and then pushed him away to glare furiously at Nathan. "Nathan James Petrelli, if you _ever_ run out of the house like that again, ten minutes after you're home from your trip, yelling about how Peter's been attacked by a serial killer," she shook her finger at him like he was nine years old, "I will _personally_ wring your neck. And _you_," she said, turning on Peter. "_You_ have given me more grey hairs than your brother and your father combined. Before you get yourself into another life-threatening situation, would you think about my blood pressure, please?"

He kissed her on the cheek. "Sorry," he said with false contrition. "You know how much I love those life-threatening situations."

She put her hand on the side of his face. "I'm just glad you're all right." Nathan, feeling forgotten and jealous over to the side, cleared his throat conspicuously. She smiled at him. "And I think you owe your brother a 'thank you'. Of all the scrapes he's gotten you out of, this really does take the cake." She pulled away from them and started into the next room. "You boys stay in here for a minute—I have a surprise for both of you."

Peter raised an eyebrow at his brother, who shot a careless shrug back. As much as they knew their mother loved them, they'd never been able to predict her. She was the source of Nathan's skill at cool manipulation, not their father. Their father had always been an open book, if not a book that one would especially want to read—it was their mother who was layered, who never showed them the cards closest to her chest. They'd learned to live with it: Nathan, by emulating her, and Peter, by learning to love the both of them anyway, despite their plots and facades.

"Peter, Nathan!" she called from the other room. "Come in here, I have someone I want you to meet!"

Exchanging practiced glances, they followed her across the hall, bored and tired and completely unprepared to walk in the room and see Claire Bennet sitting on the couch. They both recognized her instantly, but with wildly different reactions—Nathan fell back, clutching the doorframe for support, but Peter lit up like sunlight on glass, rushing forward to grab her arms, unreservedly happy to see her.

"Claire! What are you doing here?"

Claire grinned at him, unable to resist his infectious joy, and shot a glance at Mrs. Petrelli. Decoding her I-don't-know-how-to-explain look, Angela took pity on her and stepped forward. "Peter," she said calmly, "this is your niece."

Peter stared at her, then turned around, bringing a hand up to point at Nathan. "You—" he said, waving his hand between her and Claire. "Nathan, you _dog_!" He looked surprised, a little disgusted. "Does Heidi know?"

Nathan flinched as if hit, dropping his eyes, but it was Angela who answered. "I sent her to that place she loves in Jersey. She'll be on retreat for a week," she said composedly, "long enough for us to get this sorted out."

"Nathan, do you know who this _is?_ This is the girl I saved—this is the cheerleader!" He turned his attention back to Claire, who was studying her shoelaces, awkward and uncomfortable and trying very hard not to look at Nathan.

"Obviously, if I'd known she was my daughter, I would have been a little less opposed to you saving her," Nathan said, finally bucking up, calling on all his lawyer-politician defenses to get control of the situation. He walked forward to Claire, taking one of her hands. "Well, hi," he said with convincing false emotion. "I'm Nathan…I guess I'm your father."

"I know who you are," she said, finally meeting his eyes. "I was there, at the trailer park in Texas. I hid under the window."

Nathan winced slightly, trying to remember exactly what he'd said to Meredith—he was almost sure it hadn't been complimentary. At least one thing made sense now: "The rock," he said quietly.

"Yeah," she admitted. "I'm not proud of it."

"How about this," he said. "I'll forgive you for the rock if you'll forgive me for the things I said." She looked at him sharply, trying to figure out if he was being sincere—he wasn't, entirely, but he doubted she had skill enough to tell. Frankly, he found it odd that she was even looking; someone in her life had been manipulating her recently. He pulled her into a calculated hug, resting his chin in her hair—he had no idea how to be her father, but at least he knew how to pretend until he could figure it out. He counted to three and then pulled away, smoothing her hair where he'd mussed it. "This is probably going to be very hard for a very long time, Claire," he told her, "but I think we can make it work."

He waited for her to nod acceptance, and then backed away, exhausted from family bonding. His mother, picking up on his strain, quickly intervened. "Nathan, I gave the servants a few days off so there wouldn't be anyone running to the newspapers—why don't you help me make dinner?"

Grabbing the opportunity to escape, he followed her to the kitchen, leaving Peter and Claire alone in the room. He immediately slung an arm around her shoulders, dragging her to him and planting an enthusiastic kiss on the side of her head. "Some family, huh?" he laughed. "Well, come on, I'll show you around the house. Do you play pool? We've got a table downstairs."

Claire felt herself relaxing, letting go of the tense pseudo-smile she'd worn for days in favor of a real one. She wished _Peter_ was her father—he seemed to naturally know how—but it was enough that he was her uncle, and seemed willing to be her friend.

"Then you're in trouble," she teased. "I'm practically on the Olympic pool team."

"I _am _in trouble," he admitted freely. "I suck at pool."

Both feeling much better than they had in days, they went to find the pool table.


	4. Chapter 4

_I received your words from hospitals/_

_Where you felt alone/  
Your words like smoke, they made me sick/_

_But they kept me warm/_

The room that Mr. Bennet woke up in was so horribly familiar that he almost felt like laughing when he realized where he was. It was the large holding cell in Primatech, the one that had recently housed Sylar—he wasn't used to looking at it from the inside, but he was familiar enough with its bright lights and blank walls to recognize it.

Once his eyes adjusted enough to allow him to see—not well, because they'd taken his glasses, but well enough—he recognized the blurry figure of Thompson on the other side of the glass. He stood, walking slowly over until only the glass separated them.

"Why didn't you kill me?" he asked steadily. "Isn't that how we deal with leaks here?"

Thompson smiled that patronizing, edged smile that Mr. Bennet had always desperately wanted to punch. He wished he'd done it, now, before they'd caught him. "If it had been up to me, I would have," he said. "You owe your life to people far higher up, but don't think that means you're safe." He picked up a grey file and began flipping purposefully through it. "Why don't you tell me about Peter Petrelli?"

"I don't understand why you expect me to tell you anything," Mr. Bennet said reasonably.

Thompson put his file carefully down and planted his hands on the frame of the pane, leaning in with practiced menace. "Listen to me very closely," he said, his words slow, heavy with meaning. "I'm going to explain to you how this is going to work. Somehow, you've managed to get your daughter away from us—that's fine, we'll catch her sooner or later. However, there are still two members of your family around, just a few miles from this factory, as it happens. At this moment, they are safe—we haven't touched them. That could change very easily."

Mr. Bennet struggled not to let himself react, fingernails digging half-crescents into his palms. That was the trouble with working with someone for sixteen years: Thompson knew his weak points to perfection, knew exactly which buttons to push. "What do you want to know?" he asked flatly.

"Basically," Thompson said, picking the file back up, "I want to know why you seem to have botched the situation so badly. Were you trying to sabotage us, or are you simply incompetent?" Mr. Bennet didn't respond, knowing that Thompson didn't really want an answer. "Let me see if I have this straight: you were informed about a possible special, Peter Petrelli, by our agent Sarah Ellis—you did nothing. Later, an acquired special, Isaac Mendez, confirmed that he did indeed have abilities, and described occurrences matching the profile of a powerful empath—still, you did nothing. You came _face to face_ with him after the incident at your daughter's school, and observed him acting oddly, appearing to be ill. Not only did you fail to bring him in at this time, you ignored the situation altogether for several days.

Finally, informed by Mendez that Mr. Petrelli was overloading with abilities and seemed likely to _cause an apocalyptic explosion_, you made a cursory attempt to take him. You failed, and he escaped, but instead of pursuing him, you left New York immediately and went home to deal with a personal issue."

"My wife was in the hospital, if you'll recall," Mr. Bennet said testily.

"As, I said, a personal issue," Thompson continued smoothly. "And since the single bungled attempt at capture, you have not so much as _looked_ for Mr. Petrelli, despite the fact that he could, at any moment, blow up New York City." He threw the file down and crossed his arms. "Do you have any explanation for this, Bennet? Any at all?"

"I said I'd give you information," Mr. Bennet replied. "I didn't say I'd explain myself."

"Fair enough," Thompson said, and walked over to the door, opening it to admit a bored-looking Candice Wilmer. "We don't need you to—we have agents here who are capable of doing their jobs properly." He swung back around to face Mr. Bennet. "That's another thing, actually—what is it with you and Petrellis, Bennet? In my examination of your files, I found that you'd previously allowed the escape of Nathan Petrelli, which you have _also_ failed to follow up on. Do you owe them money, or what?"

"I'm a busy man," Mr. Bennet affirmed. "I seem to remember asking you several times for more resources."

"You didn't need more resources," Thompson said impatiently, "you needed the spine to properly use the resources you had. Now, is there anything else we should know about the Petrelli family? Anything else you'd like to tell Candice before she goes to do the job that should have been done weeks ago? Remember, your family's life may depend on it."

Mr. Bennet shook his head. "There's nothing," he said, sitting down on his bed. "I've written everything down. Fairly normal people, strong family ties—the only thing you need to watch is their slight tendency to do the unexpected."

Candice raised a sardonic eyebrow. "Really?" The amount of sarcasm she managed to pack into the single word was astounding to Mr. Bennet. One of the only good side effects of his capture was that he no longer required to work with this snarky, scornful woman. He'd only done a handful of missions with her, but he'd found her adolescent and annoying.

"Really," he replied emotionlessly. She shot him a world-class smirk and walked towards the door, followed by Thompson.

"I'll be back," he shot at Mr. Bennet as he left, and Candace added, "Why don't you just sit in the corner and think about what you've done? Take all the time you need."

The door snapped shut behind them, and Mr. Bennet rested his head back against the wall, feeling powerless, and hating the feeling. He wished he knew if Claire was okay. He wished he could see his family. He wished they would give him his _glasses_, for God's sake.

He closed his eyes, collected himself, and _thought_.

_Matt,_ he thought. _If you can hear me, this is Mr. Bennet. You're trapped in a very bad situation and so am I—we need to help each other. I used to be in charge of this station, I know everything there is to know about it. Here's what I need you to do…_


	5. Chapter 5

_You are weathered and worn/_

_Your petals soft and torn/_

_The faded colors/_

Claire looked askance at Peter, eyebrows up, her body twisted into a question mark, her whole posture seeming to say _Are you kidding?_

"Don't _give_ me that look," he mock-scolded her. "I _told _you I sucked at pool."

Claire leaned on her cue stick, mouth twisting as she tried not to laugh. "Yes, you did," she admitted, "but I have to say, the general idea is to keep the balls, you know—_on _the pool table."

Peter sighed, bending to pluck a red ball from the floor. "Yeah, yeah," he said. "Rub it in, why don't you? It's not like you aren't smashing me already."

"It's all about the _angles_, Peter," she said, gleefully didactic. "Your grip is horrible, that's the problem."

He grinned at her and leaned back on the wall. "Oh, shut up and shoot."

Obediently, she bent to line up her shot, aiming for the only ball she had left on the table. She hit the cue ball solidly, and it headed straight for her green-striped seven, but just as they were about to collide, the seven ball _moved_, jumping out of the way so that the cue ball went ricocheting uselessly off the side. She pounded the table in annoyance, turning an accusing glare on the studiously innocent figure beside her.

"_Peter!_ That's _cheating!_"

"Says who?" he argued. "Don't I get a handicap? You're slaughtering me!"

She punched him in the arm. "You do _not _get a handicap, I can't help it if I'm just an amazing pool player."

He tugged on one of her blond curls, teasing in a brotherly way that made her feel so much less lonely than she had two hours ago. "We'll see about that."

---

"Very pretty, isn't she?" Angela Petrelli asked as she surveyed the contents of their refrigerator. "She has your bone structure."

"She is pretty," Nathan replied, "and she's a problem. I have no idea what to do with her, Ma. I've never had a daughter—I don't know _how_."

"It's not like it's something that you can prepare for, Nathan," she said wryly. "There's no instructional handbook. But you're right, she _is _a problem. We can't let the press get a hold of this."

Nathan washed his hands in their gleaming stainless-steel sink. "There's _some_ kind of feeling that keeps popping up, telling me to hug her and protect her, sort of like what I feel sometimes for Peter. Is that fatherly instinct, do you think?"

"That's what that would be," Angela said dryly. "I'm surprised you recognized it. Now, what do you want to make for dinner?"

He turned to her, drying his hands on a floral dishtowel, eyes unreadable and glinting like minted dimes. "Potpies," he said.

---

"What's that scar on your head?" Claire asked Peter as she set up a new game of pool, dropping the balls one by one into the plastic triangle. She'd thought there was something different about him, but in the semidarkness of the room, she hadn't been able to pinpoint it until now. "Is it new? I don't remember it."

He brought a hand reflexively up to his forehead, following the white mark along its length, down into his eyebrow. "That," he told her, "is where you saved my life again."

She looked questioningly at him. "Sorry? When did I do that?"

He sat down on the edge of the table, balancing his stick on his legs. "Do you remember that guy who tried to kill you?"

She snorted. "_Remember _him? I've had nightmares about him for weeks!"

"Right, stupid question," he conceded. "Well, it turns out you're not the only one he's after."

She grabbed his arm. "No—Peter, he didn't try to kill _you_, did he?"

"He did," Peter confirmed, "but, as you can see, he didn't succeed."

"What happened?"

Peter sighed, not enthusiastic about reliving his near-death experience so soon after its occurrence. "To make a long story short, he tried to cut into my head, but I got him off me and got away long enough to call Nathan, who came and rescued me, but not before I'd had an entire room collapsed on my head." Seeing her stricken expression, he added lightly. "It was all very exciting, really. I was in pretty bad shape when Nathan pulled me out, but I healed up just fine. Except for my head," he amended, "but that was only because I was panicking when I went to heal it. Anyway, I owe you again."

"Oh," she said softly. "Um...you're welcome. But, you know, considering that you've saved my life, I think we're even."

"Not really," he disagreed. "You've saved me three times, and I only saved you once."

"Three times?"

"Yeah, there was one where I got pushed off a thirty-story building and impaled myself on some taxi rebar," he explained, waving a hand at her, "but we're not going to get into that."

"If you say so," she said, and they lapsed into comfortable silence.

"You know, Nathan's really a good guy," Peter told her after a moment. "No matter what he pretends, he really cares about people. You should give him a chance."

She looked broodingly at her feet. "Yeah," she said noncommittally, and then popped up, giving him a bright but slightly unconvincing smile. "Your turn to break."

---

When Nathan heard the front door open, he was very confused—there were no servants, his mother was in the kitchen with him, and Peter and Claire had been happily engaged in a game of pool, the last time he'd checked on them. There was no reason for anyone to be opening the door. He stuck his head out into the hall, curious and annoyed—and then stopped dead. Muscling through his initial shock, he ducked back into the kitchen and looked frantically for his mother.

"Mom!" he whispered furiously. "Mom, Heidi's back!" Mrs. Petrelli dropped the potpie she was holding, looking extremely startled. "What do I do? Where's Claire?"

Angela mobilized at once, hurrying off to the other side of the house. "I'll get her out," she said firmly. "Stay here, Nathan, and _act natural_. Tell Heidi I'm out shopping—I'll check Claire into a hotel and be back as quickly as I can."

She disappeared out the door, leaving Nathan conspicuously frozen in the middle of the kitchen, listening to Heidi's wheelchair move down the hardwood hallway. "Nathan!" she called. "Nathan, are you home?"

He gave himself a brisk mental shake, plastered on a smile, and went out to meet her. "Heidi!" he exclaimed, leaning to kiss her. "Mom told me you were at a retreat, I wasn't expecting you."

"Oh, well," she said smilingly. "The pipes burst in the spa, flooded the whole place. They told me to come back in a week."

"They have a spa?"

"Just built one," she said briskly. "The place has changed quite a bit since I last visited. I should really go more often."

"If it's that nice, _I _should go next time," Nathan joked, hoping she didn't notice the slight stiffness in his voice, or how he was subtly blocking her from moving past the entryway. "Well, you go get cleaned up. I'm making dinner, it'll be ready in about an hour."

"You, making dinner?" she laughed. "What's the occasion?"

"Nothing, really," he said breezily. "Peter came by, and I thought I might get my hands dirty for once, cook something for my family."

"Peter's here?" she said interestedly. "I haven't seen him in ages, where is he?"

"In the library," he told her, hoping Peter had had the sense to move out of the pool room, where there was clearly a game set up for two.

"I'll go say hi to him, and then I'll get ready for dinner," she said, rolling by him. As she turned down the hall, he saw his mother's car pulling out of the driveway, and let out a tense sigh of relief. That, it seemed, was that—now, he just hoped his potpies hadn't burned.

---

Heidi found Peter in the library, sprawled on a couch in that boneless way he had, reading one of their many leather-bound books. He looked up at her as she entered, surprise showing on his face.

"Hi," he greeted, setting his book on the table. "I wasn't expecting to see you, weren't you at—"

"A retreat," she confirmed. "The pipes in the spa broke, so they sent me home."

"Lucky for us," he said, coming forward to kiss her on the cheek. "It's great to see you."

"You too," she said warmly. "I just came by to say hello, and to tell you that Nathan says dinner will be ready in an hour." She began to leave, then stopped. "Oh—Peter, do you think you could grab something for me? There's a Jane Austen book on the third shelf, about halfway in…"

"No problem," he said amiably, turning to search for the book.

Heidi waited until he had his back to her, then pulled a gun from inside her jacket and coolly shot him. Tasers-bullets leapt from the barrel and hit him in the shoulder, voltage coursing into him through the connecting wires. He only had time to whirl and stare at her in shock before he collapsed with a throated cry. She stood up, reloaded her gun, and waited.

---

Nathan had been looking at his burned potpies sadly, trying to think how to rescue them—they weren't _that_ burned, only black around the edges—when he heard Peter yell from the library. Instantly, he abandoned his potpies, sprinting out of the kitchen, any number of horrible scenarios suggesting themselves to his panicked mind. However, he did not expect the one he found: Heidi, standing over Peter with a gun in her hand.

"Heidi—what—" he stammered, trying to understand how his wife was walking, why she's shot his brother, what was going on.

"Nope," she said in a tone he'd never heard her use before, a sarcastic, cutting tone, "sorry. Not Heidi."

He watched in astonishment as the air around her twisted, blurred, and formed itself into a woman he'd never seen before, standing where Heidi had been. As he stumbled back, stunned, she planted a spike-heeled foot on Peter's chest and pointed her gun at his head. "Don't even thinkabout flying," she said patronizingly. "You _really_ don't want to leave your brother alone with me." She turned her pose so that it was suddenly provocative, making miniscule changes in the way she stood so that he was forced to notice her long legs and too-short skirt.

He brought his hands up conciliatorily, using his best soothing-diplomat voice. "Fine. That's fine. We can work this out. Just—don't hurt him."

"Oh, I won't," she said, sounding obscenely amused. "Especially because this isn't a real gun." Before he could react, she snapped the muzzle up to him and fired, and he felt the bullets bite through his expensive suit into his skin, pouring electricity into him—

Candice watched him drop with dispassionate satisfaction. "Sucker," she said. Stepping over Peter, she flipped her cell phone open and dialed. "Yes, this is Candice Wilmer requesting cleanup on aisle three," she deadpanned as soon as Thompson picked up. A pause. "What? What do you mean, 'a situation'?" She kicked Peter's unconscious form in annoyance. "I told you he'd be a problem. I _told_ you he'd get out, why didn't you watch him better? No, I _know_ I'm out of line—I'm just pissed off, okay?" She tapped her pique into the oak floor, silently fuming. "Yes, I can watch them. Just promise me it won't be long." She waited long enough to hear his response, then snapped the phone closed.

She glared down at Nathan and Peter, irritated. _Now, _she wondered philosophically,_ how the hell am I going to get them into my car?_

Angela Petrelli pulled into her driveway, hoping that everything had gone well while she'd been gone. She had complete confidence in her sons' abilities to pull off a bluff, even Peter—he'd inherited it, and even if he chose to use it less often, he still had it in him to straight-faced lie. That said, Heidi was the wild card in the situation. Despite all his practice, she could sometimes see straight through Nathan's lies. That was the one trait she'd disapproved of when Nathan had proposed to her—anyone married to Nathan needed to be a little bit blind.

She walked into the house with her game face on, ready to play whatever part turned out to be necessary.

The first thing she noticed wrong was the silence. There was no sound whatsoever in the house, no screaming, no arguing, no pleasant conversation—just sterile emptiness. Then, she noticed the smoke. Hurrying into the kitchen, she found Nathan's potpies in the oven, burning merrily to a crisp, clearly unattended for some time. Confusion giving way to heavier concern, she searched room-to-room down the hallway, occasionally calling the names of her boys. There was no answer, and when she got to the library, she knew why.

There were signs of a struggle—books strewn on the floor, furniture askew, the huge portico windows smashed. As she hurried over to the windows, she saw tire tracks running under them where car tires had cut into the immaculate lawn. She gripped the windowsill, knuckles going white, panic rising like bile in her throat.

Peter and Nathan were gone.


	6. Chapter 6

_The lovers who have tainted you/_

_They pulled you into the night  
They touched your skin/_

_With velvet gloves/_

_And made you feel alive/_

When Nathan opened his eyes, he was in some kind of a hotel room, laying on an unfamiliar, meticulously made bed, and _that woman_ was staring at him. This made him uncharacteristically uncomfortable; he usually didn't mind attractive women leaning seductively on furniture in his room, but this one made him jumpy. Probably, he recalled, because she'd disguised herself as his wife, invaded his house, and shot him and Peter with paralyzing tasers. That could be part of it.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and jumped off it, feeling something bite into his neck as he moved. An exploratory touch found some kind of metal band wrapped around his throat like a collar.

"That's to keep you in line," she said helpfully. "Cuts off your abilities by injecting a neurotoxin every hour and, as an added bonus, acts as a kind of a shock collar." She held up a trigger remote. "If you misbehave, I can zap you."

"Where's my brother?" Nathan wanted to know.

"I killed him," Candice said blithely.

Nathan went white, grabbing the bedpost for support. "_What?_"

"Yeah, sorry about that. We only needed one of you." She formed her fingers into a gun and made shooting motions. "Bam, straight through the head. He didn't suffer." This last was insulting, mock-sweet.

Nathan sat down hard on the bed, head in his hands. Candice shot him a last insolent grin, and left the room, locking the door behind her. Humming perkily to herself, she crossed the suite, boots clicking a staccato beat on the floor. What a thoroughly gullible bunch these Petrellis were, she thought with satisfaction. She'd expected to be bored out of her mind, babysitting specials until the Bennet mess was sorted out.

She didn't think she'd be bored, anymore. With two such attractive, emotionally unstable men in her care, how could she be?

She paused outside the door of the other room, taking a moment to shift into a new shape. Time to check on the other Petrelli.

---

After a cursory examination of the room he was locked into—he hadn't really expected to find a way out, but he'd had to look anyway—Peter had settled back into an uncomfortable armchair to wait.

He didn't have to wait very long. He stood as he saw the doorknob turn, but when he saw who came through the door, his knees nearly gave out and his heart nearly burst trying to beat its way out of his ribcage.

"_Simone_," he gasped, barely getting the word out, trying to breathe at least enough to stay conscious.

She rushed to him, motioning for him to be quiet, her eyes worried, the same shade of earthshattering blue he remembered from his nightmares. "You _died_—" he protested, but she put a hand on his mouth, blocking his questions.

"Isaac got me to a hospital," she explained in a whisper. "It was worse than it looked, I only needed a couple of stitches. I'm fine, Peter, but we have to get you out of here, I don't know what these people are going to do to you."

"Yeah," he said vaguely, still transfixed by the sight of her standing and smiling and living like he'd thought she never would again.

She saw his look and relented, putting her hands on the sides of his head and leaning in to kiss him. He responded immediately, kissing her like he'd been starving for her, nearly dead but just pulled back from the brink by the chance to tangle his hands in the hair at the back of her neck again, and pull her closer.

The kiss grew in intensity, and she pushed him back against the wall, hard enough to drive the breath out of him for a moment. He slid his hands up her back, tracing her spine with one finger—then, suddenly, his hand met a sticky dampness at her shoulder blade. He pushed her away, and to his horror, there were two spreading patches of blood dying her shirt to red, and her eyes were going out and she was falling back, exactly like he remembered.

"No—" he choked. "No, Simone—"

As she crumpled to the ground, he saw her body distort and blur, blending into the figure of a hard-eyed brunette woman who sat up and tucked her knees into herself, laughing. "Fooled you," she mocked.

He slid down the wall, burying his head in his arms. "What do you _want _with me?"

She wondered if he knew how hopelessly broken he sounded. Probably not—it was the other one that had the act, the flawless masks. "Oh, we're not exactly sure yet," she said dryly, kicking her legs out. "We just know that we want you." He brought his head back up, leaning it against the wall behind him. She thought he looked nearly dead, and very tired, hollow all the way through. "Cheer up," she smirked. "We won't be getting into all the nasty tests and things for a while. You get to hang out with _me _instead." She batted her eyelashes exaggeratedly at him. "We can even play 'dead girlfriend' some more, if you want."

"Get out," he said flatly.

She raised her eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"Get. Out," he repeated, his voice breaking-point dangerous.

"Whatever you want, babe," she said, leaning forward until she could slip a finger under the metal collar at his neck, pulling on it until his face was inches from hers. "Just remember who's in charge here." She released him, patted his cheek, and sauntered out of the room, leaving him with blood on his hands and thoughts he'd been trying to lose.


	7. Chapter 7

"So they're gone," Claire said dully, taking in the scene of mild destruction in the library.

"They're gone," her grandmother confirmed, fairly calm despite having two sons apparently kidnapped. She'd vented some of her immediate feelings on the library furniture—it's not like anyone would notice it, she figured, just another element to the chaos—and had then taken the time to compose herself fully before bringing Claire back home.

"And you don't know what happened to them," Claire continued, flipping a book over with her toe.

"Not really, no," Angela told her. "The only clue I have is that Nathan's wife, Heidi, was here when we left and now she's not. I called her in Jersey and she's still at the retreat, so obviously, _somehow_…that was not Heidi."

Claire gave her a half-meant, shellshocked smile. "Stranger things, huh?"

"Only with _this _family," Angela said vehemently, sitting down on an untouched chair and massaging her temple.

Claire leaned on the wall, feeling upset. She had somehow managed to lose two families in less than a week, and it left her feeling very disoriented and very traumatized. When this was all over—_if _this was all over—she was nearly positive she was going to need counseling.

A tinny ringing broke through the silence of the room, and Angela pulled out her cell phone, looking as if she'd like to swat it instead of answering it. "Yes?" she answered brusquely. Then, as she listened, her face changed from annoyance to surprise and concern. "Where have you been? _Really? _Well, I guess that's that. No more bridges now, you've burned them all. I suppose you'd better come up. Yes, to New York, get here as quickly as you can. Oh, and before you go—there's someone who probably want to talk to you." She held the phone out to Claire, who stood up straight, confused. "Claire, it's your father."

Hope spattering over her face like fireworks, she snatched the phone out of her grandmother's hand with a rapidity bordering on rudeness. "Dad?"

"Claire bear?" she heard her father say, voice breaking up with distance and emotion. "Sweetheart, are you okay? How have you been?"

"I've been fine," she assured him quickly. "They're taking really good care of me, everything's been great." She felt no need to tell him of the events of the last hour, tangled and worrisome as they were. "How about you? Did everything go like you wanted?"

She heard him sigh with more heaviness than she felt was healthy. "No, not exactly," he admitted, "but thing turned out all right, and that's all that matters. I'm coming to New York, sweetheart, I'll be there in a few days."

"Have you seen Mom and Lyle? Are they okay?"

There was a pregnant pause, and then he spoke again, in the way she could now identify as the 'lying-to-Claire-for-her-own-good' voice. "They're fine, honey. They miss you."

She swallowed down her concern and resentment, reminding herself that in the past, his actions _had _been, without exception, for her good. "Tell them hi for me before you go," she said, playing along with him even though it made her throat feel tight and restricted.

"Well, I'd probably better go," he said. "I need to find a flight to New York. I love you, Claire. You be careful."

"I will, Dad," she said, hating the finality of the words. "I love you."

"Love you too, Claire bear," he said. "I'll see you soon." And then he was gone, states and states away and no longer connected to her at all.

She handed the phone back to Angela, who looked vaguely disapproving. "Ridiculous," she said. "This whole thing has become such a mess."

"What _happened_?" Claire asked. "My dad wouldn't really tell me."

Her grandmother rubbed her forehead tiredly. "Oh, he went and got himself caught. Apparently they've got some kind of a shapeshifter, and she tricked him into spilling his whole plan for…I don't know, destroying The Company, whatever it was he _was_ planning. In any case, they had him and they were holding him, but he was able to escape—very cleverly, I must admit, with the help of a mind-reader. They'll both be here within a day or two."

Claire slid her tongue over the back of her teeth, ideas twisting together and connecting in her head. "Wait," she said thoughtfully, "did you say a—shapeshifter?"

Angela tapped her chin, considering. "Yes," she said, drawing the world out so that it had four or five syllables. "Now, _that's_ a thought, isn't it? A Heidi that wasn't really Heidi…"

"Exactly what I was thinking," Claire said. "Do you think _they _got Peter and Nathan?" She paused. "Come to think of it, who are _they_, anyway? I really don't know what I'm talking about, here."

Angela flapped a hand at her, dismissing the question and its attached web of measureless backstory and deception. "Just think of them as a kind of a large corporation with no morals and dangerous amount of focus. The point is, if they have my sons, it could be very bad."

"So what are we going to do?" Claire asked, kicking an ottoman upright.

"I don't know," she admitted. "I need to make a few phone calls."

Suddenly, the doorbell rang from the other side of the house. Looking frazzled, Mrs. Petrelli began walking toward the door, but Claire waved her away. "I'll get it," she said, glad to get out of the distressingly trashed room.

---

It had been fairly easy for Sylar to find Peter Petrelli. He and his brother were side-by-side on Mohinder's list, easy to find in his picture-perfect memory. Nathan, in fact, had been the key—a web search for his name had pulled up dozens of sites, lobbying or complaining about his chances for Congressional candidacy. His victims identified, he'd only had to run a search for an address on one of the sites, and there it was—the X on his map, a penthouse in New York. He'd always known that if he put forth the effort, evolution would help him along, and here was the proof: Peter Petrelli, the embodiment of everything he'd wanted, practically giftwrapped in his hands. Just one more death, and it would all be over. He readied himself—all his talk of conclusiveness notwithstanding, Peter had proven to be quite a tricky catch at their last meeting—and rang the doorbell.

The girl who opened the door was blond, pretty in a girl-next-door way, and stressed-looking—Sylar recognized her immediately. Unfortunately, she placed him just as quickly, and wasn't slow about reacting—she slammed the door on him and took off down the hall, yelling for someone. He caught the door before it shut and threw it open, catching up with her quickly, telekinetically pushing her into the plaster wall with enough force to leave dents. As she screamed and kicked her legs at him, an older, formidable-looking woman ran into the room, looking for the source of the noise. He dealt with her quickly, sending a painted vase into her head that dropped her like a puppet with its strings cut.

He turned his attention back to Claire, whose screams had taken on a sharp edge of terror that he found familiar and oddly refreshing. This was more like it—this was how it was supposed to go, not the messy scramble and mess that Peter had been. Well, after he took Claire's power, it would be that much easier to take Peter's—it was a step-by-step process, really, an evolutionary ladder. He wasn't exactly sure what Mr. Bennet's daughter was doing in New York, but he didn't give it to much thought; to his mind, it was simply the world bending again to give way to its natural course.

He wrapped a hand around her throat, holding her still, trying to figure out how to work this. Claire Bennet presented an interesting problem—given her extraordinary healing power, it would be difficult for him to cut into her head as he usually did. Yes, Claire was a problem indeed, but he felt the potential payoff was worth the trouble.

He saw Claire's eyes widen to saucer-rounds, but he didn't think to attribute it to anything more than fright and fear of dying. That was a mistake, and he was spectacularly made aware of it seconds later as a chair came smashing down on his temple, driving him headfirst into unconsciousness.

As Sylar's hold on her went limp, Claire dropped to the ground, staring, half-afraid, at her newly materialized rescuer. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a scrubby beard that made him appear far more unkempt than he was. His eyes were slightly sunken but vividly alive, giving her the impression of looking at something bright from far away.

"Sorry that took so long," he said in a heavily British, oaky-sounding accent. "Couldn't find anything to hit him with."

"It's, um," she stammered, "it's fine. Thank you."

He peered at her in a disconcertingly piercing way, and she shifted her weight, uncomfortable under the marquee-spotlight of his gaze. "I recognize you," he concluded after a through examination. "What's your name, girl?"

"Claire Bennet," she said uneasily.

To her confusion, he dropped the chair, laughing, and clapped his hands together. "Small world, isn't it? Well, you've certainly grown up."

"I don't know you," she protested, bewildered.

"Ah, of course you don't remember," he said. "Take a closer look, Claire. Don't you remember me pushing you on your swingset, picking you up, giving you nickels? Unless that father of yours decided to get rid of the memories, there should be _something_ there."

"You're not—" she started, but cut herself off when she realized that he _was_, under all the facial hair and sarcasm. "Claude?" she said tentatively.

"That's right," he said, laughing again.

"But I haven't seen you since I was a kid! My dad said—" she faltered.

"He told you I was dead, didn't he?" Claude said grimly. "He thought I was, but here I am."

"You used to be my dad's partner, and that means you worked for The Company, too," she said shrewdly.

He regarded her with mild surprise. "I guess you're old and clever enough now to know that daddy doesn't work for a paper company."

"My dad's a good person," she defended. "He's been working against The Company for _years_, and they caught him, but he escaped and he's coming to New York."

"Well, maybe he's finally changed," Claude said dubiously. "Stranger things have happened. But I didn't come here to talk about your father. Where's Peter? I need to see him."

Her face fell, and she seemed to remember Sylar, unconscious at her feet. "He's gone," she told Claude. "Him and his brother. We think The Company took them."

He swore colorfully, and to such enthusiastic extent that she almost felt she should cover her ears. "I shouldn't have left him," he said bleakly. "He doesn't have any idea what he's doing, I should never have left."

"Don't you think we should do something with this guy?" Claire prompted worriedly, nudging Sylar with her toe.

"Good point," he said, eying Sylar. "He could wake up at any moment. I'll see what I can do about him, and you go check if that woman is okay."

Guiltily, she remembered her grandmother, and rushed to make sure Mrs. Petrelli was unharmed. Angela was just stirring when Claire reached her, eyes fluttering open to the welcome sight of her granddaughter, alive.

"Claire," she breathed, reaching out to grab her hand. "You're all right. I thought—"

"I'm fine," Claire assured her. "I got saved, again. Are you all right? How's your head?"

Mrs. Petrelli sat up, holding her forehead gingerly. "I think I'll survive. What happened to that man? Where is he?" When Claire pointed to Sylar on the floor, she transformed back into competence and command, issuing orders to her granddaughter and the other, unfamiliar man. "Oh, dear. Claire, go into the bathroom down the hall and look behind the mirror. There should be tranquilizers in with the medicines, on the third shelf—bring them to me. You, hand me the phone and keep and eye on that man. I'm calling the police."


	8. Chapter 8

_Your eyes are like sea glass/_

_So weathered and worn/  
From all they've seen of/_

_Adolescence torn/_

When Nathan first started hearing Peter's voice, he thought he was going crazy, driven quite mad by the buildup of guilt and grief. Then, joined with his brother's soft tenor, he heard Simone (_Simone?)_ speaking, which made him feel merely confused. It was only when he began to hear Candice's slick, sarcastic voice that he knew it was real, and began searching for the source of the sound. After a few minutes, he discovered that he was hearing them from another room through his heating vent, and that as long as he was quiet and stayed close to the vent, he could hear what they said.

What he heard made him angry—Candice was obviously screwing with Peter's head, playing on his trauma and impractical sensitivity for her own amusement. He listened, grinding his teeth in the way that his dentist always got angry at him for, waiting for her to leave. The moment she did, he dropped to his knees by the vent, hands on either sides of it.

"Peter," he whispered, hoping Candice couldn't hear him. "Peter!"

There was a pause, and then he heard his brother scrambling in the other room. "_Nathan_?"

"Yeah, it's me. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Peter said, sounding distressed. "Nathan, I didn't know she got you, too. She didn't say anything—"

"God, Pete, she told me you were dead. I can't tell you how happy I am to hear your voice."

"She told you _what?_"

"I don't know why you're so shocked," he said, annoyed by Peter's constant surprise at the darkness and spitefulness of the world. "I heard her messing with you, pretending to be Simone. Whoever these people are, Peter, they aren't the good guys."

"She didn't hurt you, did she?"

"Besides telling me she killed you?" he said wryly. "No. No, she didn't."

"I don't suppose there's any chance of getting out of here?"

"Not really. Not while she's got that trigger remote."

There was a pause on both sides of the vent as they considered their situation, and then a break in the silence when they realized that their situation was far too depressing to consider for long. "I hope Claire's okay," Peter said bleakly.

Nathan didn't respond, trying to understand how Peter did it—how he thought of everyone in the world before himself, that selfless, sainted mindset that sometimes made him jealous, but usually made him scornful. Nathan believed in survival of the fittest, and he believed in creating a world where you _were_ the fittest, no matter how many blood sacrifices you had to make along the way. The only people who didn't fall into the 'expendable' category were his family, and he couldn't quite fit Claire into that group yet. And, he reminded himself, sometimes even his family had to take hits for him, if it meant that he would survive.

"Peter, what would you say if I told you I wanted to be the President of the United States?"

"Why?" Peter asked, voice carefully neutral. "Is that something you're likely to say?" He could almost _see_ the expression on Peter's face, the skeptical, pride-deflating look that his brother used to give him when he was ten and told him he wanted to rule the world. He _still_ wanted to rule the world, but he didn't tell people anymore—he just _did _it, quietly, sneakily, so that they would simply wake up one day and notice that he was looking down on them from far higher than he'd been before.

"It's been offered," Nathan told him, wondering why he was saying this to Peter of all people, Peter, the one person who had a chance of talking him out of it. "It's on the table."

"You would be a terrible president, Nathan," Peter said frankly.

Privately, Nathan was inclined to agree with him, for the reasons he'd just been thinking—he liked power, and he liked control, but he was not above sacrificing a whole country to get what he wanted. Then again, it could be argued that 'what he wanted' was the presidency; maybe, if he made it to the very top, the power-lust would finally be satisfied. "I don't know," he said. "I'm pretty good at making speeches."

"You're great at making speeches," Peter agreed. "What you're not so good at is following up on them."

Before he could reply, the door opened and Candice sauntered in, carrying a plate on the flat of her hand like a diner waitress. She kicked the door shut behind her and gave him an snarky half-smile, sliding the plate onto his nightstand "I brought you some food, and I hope you're grateful, because I considered letting you starve," she informed him sardonically. "I've got you pretty much pegged as a steak-and-potatoes guy, but I confess, I haven't a clue what to order for your brother."

"You told me my brother was dead," he said flatly.

"I lied," she said, licking her fingers clean of stray gravy without a trace of remorse.

He put one hand over his face, suddenly feeling very tired. "Italian food," he said, words slightly muffled by his hand.

She leaned over the table, deliberately letting her shirt fall open. "Sorry, what was that?"

He left his hand blocking his eyes, studiously ignoring her and especially her body, trying to implement a lust-control he'd never seen the need to develop. _She's evil,_ he told himself sternly. _She shot you with a taser. You do not want her. _ "Italian food," he repeated. "He likes Italian food. Now will you please move?"

She laughed unkindly, sitting on the table. "What, am I making you uncomfortable?" She shifted into the form of Heidi, grabbing his tie and pulling him forward in a decidedly un-Heidi way. Irritated, he swatted her hand away and walked to the other side of the table. "Or does that make you uncomfortable, too? I suppose I could see why, considering how you crippled her for life, and all."

He felt a charge of paralyzing guilt race up his spine and splinter off down his arms, the words that everyone else was too polite to say hitting him with all the force of unspoken truth. He turned slowly, not sure what he intended to say or how he planned to rebuff her brutal honesty, but what he saw her new form, he lost all chance of defense. She'd now changed into that blond woman from Las Vegas (Nancy? Nikki?) and was smirking shamelessly at him.

"That's right," she said silkily. "I read your dossier, and _what_ a soap opera it turned out to be. Honestly, I'm going to see if I can get a copy of it to read on airplanes—beats the hell out of John Grisham any day."

He ran his hands fretfully through his hair, making it stand up at odd angles in the back. He prided himself on his control, he did—but how was he to defend himself against a woman who apparently knew his whole life, and found it all incredibly amusing? He changed tack. "You can't hold me forever, you know. I'm a Congressional candidate—it's not like people aren't going to notice."

"You let me worry about that," she said, infuriatingly condescending, hopping down from the table. "Eat your dinner," she said, and walked out of the room.

---

Having eavesdropped as best he could on Nathan and Candice, Peter fully expected Candice to come into his room in the guise of someone female, overly sexy, and connected to his past. He was starting to get a handle on this woman—he still didn't understand what motivated her, but he knew her type, and her methods were predictable once you spotted them.

Or so he thought. When she came to bring him his food, he found that she'd thrown him a curveball again, and one that was going to hurt. The person who entered his room was tallish and with a distinctive, patrician bone structure and a face that was attached to a majority of his worst memories. It was his father.

"Not funny, Candice," he said testily, taking the plate of lasagna from her.

"Oh, I thought it was," she said as she changed back. "Your relationship with your father was just such a delicious tangle, wasn't it? You two should have gone on 'Oprah'."

"We had our differences."

"Yeah, I know," she said mockingly. "That's why he hated you, I take it. That must have really sucked, having your own dad think you're completely worthless. Tell me," she said, playing psychiatrist, "how do you _feel_ about that?"

He eyed her thoughtfully. "Lonely," he said concisely.

She smiled like the devil, like a spider. "I can fix that."

He looked at her for a very long time, and she felt his eyes on her skin as they slid over her. _He wouldn't_, she thought. Not Peter Petrelli.

He did. Dropping the plate of pasta to splatter bloodily on the carpet, he grabbed her around the waist and jerked her to him, kissing her with an anger she didn't think he had in him, kissing her like he was trying to burn something out of himself. She kissed him back without compunctions, enjoying herself thoroughly, bringing her hands around the back of his neck. She felt his hand move up her side, making her nerve endings scream where he touched, and she found herself actually wishing he wouldn't stop, actually wanting to keep kissing him until her lungs were burning for air.

Then, abruptly, he shoved her away, breathing hard, eyes glassy. "What?" she snapped, annoyed. "You don't want to play anymore?"

He shook his head, lighting with inexplicable satisfaction. "No," he said. "No, I got what I wanted." He held up his left hand, and in it was her trigger remote. She made a snatch for it, screaming in fear and frustration, but he pulled it out of her reach, smiling as she hadn't seen him since he'd been captured. "You shouldn't wear such tight clothes," he told her. "Things show up really easily."


	9. Chapter 9

Nathan had stopped listening to Candice and Peter after the first few moments of their conversation—he was just such an easy target, and she was just so willing to pull the trigger—but he hadn't expected her back in his room so _soon_. When he saw his door opening, he jumped up hastily, trying to prepare himself for whatever incarnation she'd taken on.

The door had opened fully, outlining his brother's silhouette against the light from the next room. "Right," he said firmly, "that's enough games, Candice. I'm tired and I'm going to sleep."

"No, Nathan," Peter explained earnestly, walking towards him, "it's _me_, really. I got the remote away from her and knocked her out, she's in the other room."

"I'm sure," Nathan said dismissively, turning away.

Peter sat down on the nearest armchair, exasperated. "_Nathan_," he said, drawing the word out. "All right, I guess you're right to be suspicious. How about this—do you remember when I came to you a few months ago and told you I could fly? Do you remember what you said to me? You said 'Tell you what, you think you can fly, why don't you jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, see what happens.' Remember?" Nathan turned back to him, mouth still twisted with distrust, but listening. Peter held up his arm, pulling his sleeve back and pointing at a silvery mark halfway up his forearm. "Remember how I got this scar, Nathan? It was your last day at home, you were going off to college, and I didn't want you to leave, and when you were taking your luggage downstairs I got upset and hugged you. I grabbed your knees and you lost your balance, and we both fell straight down the stairs. I ran into the banister and had to have stitches, but you broke your arm and needed surgery, so I got my wish and you were home for another three weeks."

Nathan smiled at the memory, giving in. "All right, all right," he said. "That's enough of that, I believe you—but how the hell did you get that remote off her?"

Peter eyes went distinctively shifty, and he looked down at his feet. "Oh, you know," he prevaricated. "I was just…really sneaky."

"You're a terrible liar, Pete, and you know it," Nathan accused. "Now, tell me what _really_ happened."

Peter put his hands in his pockets, staring up at the ceiling. "I kissed her," he said blandly.

Nathan burst out laughing, ignoring Peter's aggravated glare. "Oh, Peter," he said affectionately. "You son of a lawyer, you."

"Shut up," Peter snapped, flushing. "We need to get out of here."

They walked out into the adjoining room, enjoying the feeling of unrestricted movement. Peter pointed into the other room, and he could see Candice's stiletto-clad feet from where he stood, bound at the ankles with what looked like a dish towel. "She's in there, and she's unconscious, for now. We're going to have to be careful not to let her wake up, because she'll just change into something else and escape."

Nathan tugged on the metal ring around his neck. "We have to get these off, Peter. If she gets her hands on another remote, she could still control us."

"I agree," Peter said, then paused. "How?"

Silence. Then: "Pliers?"

---

"Hello, room service? I don't suppose you have any pliers?"

---

Peter knew he shouldn't feel uncomfortable, and he knew it was very unlikely that everyone was staring at him. Theoretically, he was just another anonymous shopper in an anonymous roadside store, but he couldn't help feeling like an escaped convict. He felt twitchy and paranoid, mistrustful of every innocent teenage couple and soccer mom that brushed past him. Considering his recent problems with people not being who they seemed, he supposed he could be excused for his jumpiness, but he very much just wanted to get a pair of pliers and get out.

He fidgeted nervously with the collar of his sweatshirt, hoping nobody noticed the glint of metal at his neck or, if they did, assumed it was some kind of (strange) jewelry. There had been a short dispute with Nathan over that sweatshirt ("You have to go, Pete, your sweatshirt will cover the collar." "I'm not any good at this, Nathan, why don't you go? I'll give you my sweatshirt." "Right, that wouldn't look ridiculous, a black hoody over an Armani suit."), but had yet to win an argument with brother—he couldn't commit the way Nathan did, couldn't smile and twist words like Nathan did.

He handed Candice's credit card to the cashier, praying that he wouldn't check the name or ask for a signature. This was the risky part of the shopping venture, but there was nothing for it—they hadn't been able to find their own wallets, so they'd been forced to 'borrow' hers and hope for the best. He'd had enough trouble with her car—he'd never really learned how to drive stick shift, not reliably—and if her card gave him problems, he thought he might scream.

Fortunately, the hung-over cashier didn't give the card a second glance, handing over the pliers with a pained grimace, eyes nearly closed. Peter waved him a relieved thank-you and hurried out of the store, anxious to get back to the hotel room before Candice killed Nathan, or seduced him, or both.

---

"_Took_ you long enough," Nathan exclaimed when he got back into the room.

"You know I can't drive stick," Peter retorted. "If you were that impatient, you should have gone yourself."

Nathan rolled his eyes and ignored this. "Did everything go all right?"

Peter tossed him the pliers, and he caught them easily, one-handed, like he used to catch pop flies in high school baseball. "Everything went fine. How about you?"

He nodded to Candice, lying on the floor at his feet where he'd moved her so that he could keep an eye on her and watch court TV at the same time. "She started to come to about an hour ago, but I kicked her pretty hard in the head, and she's been out every since" he said blithely. "It made me feel way better about things, actually. You should try it, it's very therapeutic."

"I think that's called sadism," Peter told him helpfully, "and I'd rather not touch her, if it's all the same to you."

"Hey, I'm not the one who was making out with her," Nathan smirked.

"Would you shut up about that already?" Peter said, sitting on the ottoman next to Nathan. "Come on, get this off me."

Nathan slid the pliers carefully under the metal band. "We have to get home as soon as possible. Mom's probably out of her mind with worry, and I've already missed two dinners and a rally."

"We could just fly home," Peter suggested as Nathan snipped through the collar. "We can do that, you know."

"I hate it when you say things like that—get ready, I'm pulling this out." Peter drew his breath in sharply as the needle came out of his neck, and Nathan dropped the band to the floor. "You think we're some kind of Wonder Twins living in a comic book world, but we're _not_, and you're going to get yourself stuck in some laboratory." Peter made a face, looking argumentative, but Nathan wasn't done. "Did you enjoy this? Think this was fun? This is _nothing_ compared to what people will do to you if you don't start acting _normal_."

Peter shook his head, rubbing his neck where the collar had chafed. "You don't get it, Nathan. We have these abilities for a _reason_, okay? They're not going to disappear just because you're too afraid to use them."

Nathan slapped the pliers into his palm, a little harder than strictly necessary. "And how do you propose getting Candice home with us, if we jump out of the window and fly away like happy little birds? You need to learn that not everything can be solved by magic powers, Peter."

"I've flown carrying people—" Peter started to protest, but Nathan cut in, neatly slicing off the back half of his sentence.

"We're taking the car."

"I _told _you, I suck at—"

"I'll drive.


	10. Chapter 10

(Author's note: This has gone on far longer than I expected, and I've now used up every single line from my title song, "Magnolia" by The Hush Sound—so I'm going to start cheating. I'll stay within the same artist, at least, but I'm definitely going to have to start using lyrics from other songs…)

_You were a fire/_

_Caught in a storm/  
Memories, like embers_

_Keep us warm/_

Traumatized and paranoid from her second encounter with Sylar, Claire had been watching the driveway compulsively for the past two days, carefully monitoring the postman delivering mail, glaring suspiciously at neighbors walking dogs. They'd all dealt with the ordeal in different ways: Angela, by completely redecorating the hallway; Claude, by wandering around the house, eating anything that was left open and turning invisible at the slightest noise; Claire, by watching the perimeter with the vigilance of a well-trained guard dog. Once her father got here, she felt, everything would be all right, but for now she _needed_ to watch.

Thus far, all intruders had proven to be innocuous, but when Claire saw the hyper-flashy red sports car pull into the driveway, her heart nearly stopped (would it start again, she wondered, were she to literally be scared to death? Could that be healed?). _This _vehicle did not belong to a mailman or an insurance salesman—she didn't know _anyone_ who would drive such an eye-catching monstrosity.

She jumped off the windowsill and went running for Claude—Angela was at a charity fundraiser—who was predictably to be found in the kitchen, working his way through a pack of Fig Newtons that someone had foolishly left on the counter. "There's someone in the driveway," she told him breathlessly. "Someone just pulled up in a car I've never seen before, and I don't know who they are, _come look_." She grabbed his sleeve and dragged him insistently into the hall, just in time to see Peter and Nathan, looking decidedly worn around the edges, come in the door.

She dropped Claude's arm at once and hurtled herself at them with such force that she nearly drove them back out the doorway, surprised to find that she was just as happy to see Nathan as she was Peter. They hugged her back enthusiastically, Nathan using one hand to steady them on the door frame.

"I think you missed your true calling in life, little miss cheerleader," Peter told her, sounding winded. "Someone call the NFL and tell them we have an emergency linebacker sub."

"What _happened_?" she demanded, untangling herself from their various limbs. "Where have you two _been_?"

"Long story," Nathan said, holding up a hand to forestall her questions, "and before we tell it to you, there's a shapeshifter in the trunk that we need to deal with."

Looking over Claire's shoulder, Peter's mouth fell open in a decidedly unattractive way. "Claude?" he exclaimed. "What are _you _doing here?"

"He saved my life," Claire explained, "but that's kind of a long story, too. Claude, come help us with this…_shapeshifter_, or whatever it was."

As they walked down the driveway, Peter remarked offhand, "You know, I'm not sure 'shapeshifter' is the right word. She doesn't just change herself—sometimes she changes things around her, remember, Nathan?"

"Right, well, unless you plan on calling her 'illusionist-who-shifts-not-only-the-shape-of-herself-but-also-the-shapes-of-other-things'," Nathan said sardonically, "maybe we'd better stick to the label we have." He popped the trunk of the car, revealing Candice, unconscious, bent uncomfortably into the small space.

"I just don't think 'shapeshifter' is the right term," persisted Peter. "What if we get mixed up later because we were using the wrong word—"

"Oh, shut up," Claude said. "I haven't seen you two minutes and already you're bothering me."

"Hey, you're the one who came crawling back," Peter ribbed. "Missed me too much, did you?"

"Knew you'd get yourself into some bloody mess and most likely take the rest of the world with you, is more like it," Claude grumbled.

"Look, this is really cute and all," Nathan interrupted, "but do you think we could get her inside before she changes into the Terminator and kills us all?"

"Right," Peter agreed. "You take her legs, we'll get the rest." He started to lift, then stopped and grinned at Nathan. "On second thought, maybe I'd better switch you—I know how you are with a pretty pair of legs."

"I wouldn't talk if I were you, Pete," Nathan shot back. "You're the one who couldn't seem to keep your hands off her."

Claire and Claude nearly dropped Candice, goggling at Peter. "You're joking," Claude laughed. "I don't believe it."

"We are _not _going to get into that," Peter said determinedly "When you hear the whole story, you'll understand."

"Right," Claude said smugly. "That's what they all say."

---

"You've got to be kidding," Peter said, staring in horror at the phone Claude held toward him.

"No, I'm really very serious," Claude said impatiently. "It's Company policy. If an agent doesn't check in within forty-eight hours, they _will _find out why. So unless you want to take your chances against a crack retrieval team, I suggest you make the call."

They were gathered in the guest bedroom, perched on various pieces of furniture around a newly conscious Candice who glared at them from the ground. They felt sure she would probably be doing more than glaring, had they not thought to gag her with a piece of duct tape—she was _not _happy. Peter had had the idea at the last minute to take one of their controlling metal collars with them, and after a few tries, he managed to solder it together with the metal-melting ability he'd seen Sylar use. They'd put their now- harmless captive in the spare room, and had been feeling very good about themselves when Claude had ruined it by warning them of possible Company retaliation.

"This is the only thing to do, and you know it," Claude told him sternly. "Stop shilly-shallying and take the phone."

"I can't be _her_," Peter protested. "I don't even know if I can use her ability yet."

"There's only one way to find out," Claude said, grabbing his hand and forcing the phone into it.

"I think you'd better, Pete," Nathan urged. "The last thing we need is to bring the Company down on our heads—you remember what that's like, don't you?"

Peter stared at the cell phone unhappily, knowing what his decision had to be. It was easy for him to figure out what emotions he associated with Candice—annoyance, pain, and disgust came effortlessly to mind. His surroundings lurched sickeningly, blurring and twisting the air, shuddering into a new form. When it all stopped, he only had to look down at his hand—now delicate and appliqué-nailed—to check that it had worked, and then snatched up the phone, eager to get the ordeal over with.

Scrolling to the number labeled 'Thompson', he waited impatiently for the man to pick up, carefully ignoring the amused looks from the real Candice across the room.

"Candice?" he heard a steady baritone voice come across the line. "Where have you been? I was starting to wonder."

Steeling himself, he replied. "Sorry," he said, trying not to be shocked at hearing her smooth, provoking tones coming out of his mouth, "I lost track of time. When can I bring them in, Thompson? I'm tired of eating room service and watching makeover shows."

"It's going to be a while," he said, reprimanding but understanding. "Bennet called the police on us, it's been such a huge mess."

"I wish you would hurry—I'm getting very bored. What say I shoot both of 'em and come back to Texas? I can be on the next flight."

"I'm sure you'll be fine," he said. "Just make sure they stay in your custody."

"Can do, boss. I'll call you tomorrow." He snapped the phone shut and shifted immediately, vastly relieved to have his own body back again.

Claire squeezed his hand sympathetically, worried at the dazed, sickened look in his eyes. "Weirdest. Experience. Ever," he said finally, rubbing the back of his hand against his mouth.

Claude clapped him on the shoulder, nearly as amused as Candice. "I hope you get used to it," he said, "because you've just promised to do it again tomorrow."

Peter closed his eyes and leaned his head back. "Don't remind me."

"Well, for all your complaining," Nathan interjected, "you gave a very convincing performance—you sounded just like her."

"Hooray for me, call the Academy and get me an Oscar," Peter said, bitingly sarcastic. "Can we not talk about it?"

"See? You _still_ sound like her," Nathan said. "Does this shapeshifting thing have any side effects?"

Peter nodded toward the silent figure of Candice, leaning against the bed with all the grace she could manage, considering that her hands were duct-taped behind her back. "Ask _her_," he suggested. "Be my guest."

Nathan gave her a glance, and was promptly pierced through by a searing, scornful glare. "No, really," he demurred politely. "I'll pass."

NOTE TO READERS: Thank you, everyone who's given me plot suggestions, they're great and I seem to be back on track! If you have any ideas, though, still don't hesitate to share!


	11. Chapter 11

_Love you are foolish/_

_You're tired/  
Your sleeplessness makes you a liar/_

Mr. Bennet couldn't help but feel apprehensive about ringing the doorbell of this house. For one thing, the house itself seemed to go out of its way to be imposing, a monster of a socially-impressive penthouse with appropriate pillars and pilasters spread over the front like a line drawing gone berserk. This was not the main source of his concern, however—mostly, he was worried because, out of four members of the family whose house he was about to enter, he'd currently tried to kidnap two of them. Not, to his mind, a recipe for a warm welcome. Grave misgivings notwithstanding, he didn't hesitate to ring the doorbell. His little girl was in there, his Claire, and no amount of Petrellis were going to stop him getting to her.

It wasn't, as he'd hoped, Claire who opened the door. However, it was someone he recognized, Peter Petrelli, and he _was_ glad to see Peter—not because he cared terribly much about him, but because it meant that Candice had been unsuccessful in abducting him. It meant a failure for The Company, and that made him perversely thrilled. Peter gave him a wary half-smile but didn't speak, falling back almost immediately to reveal Claire, looking the way she used to look on Christmas mornings at the sight of him.

He rushed forward immediately and folded her into his arms, hugging her tighter and tighter until there was no chance anyone could ever take her from him again, holding her away from the rest of the world. She hid her face in his shoulder, but he could tell by the way she shook that she was crying, so he kissed her on the top of her head and shushed her like he had when she was seven and had come to him to fix her skinned knees. All of his doubts and regrets and second guesses fell away, melted to nothing by the reality of holding her. She was _worth_ it, worth his job and his tears, even worth his life, and he knew that he would do anything, kill anyone that ever tried to come between them again.

There was an acutely uncomfortable silence from Peter as he tried to politely ignore the teary reunion. "Do, um, do you want to come in?" he asked finally, moving back to make space for them to come into the entryway.

At that, they pulled apart at last, but Mr. Bennet kept an arm around Claire's shoulders as he turned. Angela and Nathan, drawn by the noise, had joined them, though Nathan was looking rather like he wanted to fly away from Mr. Bennet again.

"I hope you don't mind my intruding your home," he said graciously. "I know that we haven't always been on the same side, and that there are things I've done that have hurt your family, things that I need to apologize for. I did and still do think that these things were in the best interest of us all, but I'm sorry if they caused you undue pain. I'm very grateful for the way you've protected my little girl, and I want you to know that I'll try to repay you for that in whatever way I can."

Claire, snuggled at his side, thought it sounded strange—her dad making speeches—but she couldn't help but feel that everything would be fine. She loved her dad and she loved Peter and Nathan—how could they not like each other?

It occurred to her with the out-of-nowhere suddenness of a prairie thunderstorm that she now had two fathers. The startling thought broke over her consciousness and poured out an alarming shower of new possibilities—it was all right to have a dad and a stepdad, a father she knew and a father she disliked, but how could she reconcile two fathers that she wanted to love equally? Which had greater claim on her life? How could she possibly share herself between them?

Claude materialized out of the open air of the entryway, but Claire didn't flinch. It had been startling at first, to have an invisible man in the house, prone to appear anywhere at the most unfortunate of moments, but she'd since gotten used to it. Her father, however, tensed noticeably, jerking backwards with an expression on his face she didn't recognize.

"Claude," he said, a simple word of emotionless acknowledgement.

"Bennet," he responded, and for a moment there was such a charge of indefinable intensity between them that everyone in the room was caught up in it, straight-riveted, unable to breathe. Then: "Looks like you're a better man than they thought you were, after all."

There was a collective sigh of relief as the pressure drained out of the room, confrontation defused seconds before the bomb went off. "That means a lot," Mr. Bennet admitted honestly. "At least, coming from you."

"I still don't forgive you for shooting me," Claude added, but it was too late to do any harm—words had gone back to being just words, instead of viral weapons.

"Fair enough."

"Hey," Peter broke in, feeling that it was now safe to help smooth out the frazzled relationships, "me and Claire were playing Twister in the library—maybe we should all go in there, we have a lot to talk about."

Everyone agreed, and followed Angela's lead down the narrow hallway like a third-grade class in single file, like ducklings after their mother. They entered the library (which Claire had always privately thought looked like the library from "Beauty and the Beast", huge and fairytale-intellectual) and scattered themselves sporadically on the red plush furniture. To the surprise of those who didn't know them well, Peter and Claire went straight back to their game of Twister, kicking their shoes off and handing the spinner to Mr. Bennet, who took it with an air of fatherly resignation. His eyes met Nathan's over their heads, and they both became suddenly aware of a connection of twin spirits, a reuniting of figures poured from the same mold.

Nathan nodded slightly—nearly imperceptibly—in recognition, straightening his tie. Mr. Bennet lifted his chin in response, and then obediently flicked the arrow of the spinner. "Right foot red," he called, then addressed himself to the rest of the group. "The first and most serious problem I see is that our friend Peter seems likely to blow up New York City. Thought, anyone? Suggestions?"

"The kid and I were making good progress before you came along and scared the living daylights out of me," Claude told him, leaning his chair back on two legs. "I'd lay odds he can throttle it down, still."

"How was your organization planning to deal with him?" Nathan asked shrewdly.

"Left hand blue. I'll admit, our intentions weren't terribly philanthropic. Oh, we wouldn't have wanted him exploding any major metropolises, to be sure, but our main interest was in learning about his abilities. Vivisection wouldn't have been out of the question." Peter made a choked sound and fell out of his Twister pose, but Mr. Bennet didn't seem to notice. "Certainly, we would have killed him if he seemed to be too far out of our control. Our power inhibitors are by no means flawless."

"Right," Nathan said quickly. "Obviously not the solution we're looking for."

"I should warn you," Mr. Bennet said, "The Company is sending an agent after you and your brother."

"Thanks," Nathan said, grinning humorlessly. "We've taken care of it."

At Mr. Bennet's confused look, Angela cast her eyes up at the ceiling and explained. "Candice, I think her name is? She in the spare bedroom upstairs."

Mr. Bennet rubbed his jaw, impressed in spite of himself. "Well, that throws a wrench in things. Thompson will be expecting her call. Left foot yellow."

"And as far as he knows, he got it," Peter said, twisting himself to get his foot on the appropriate yellow dot.

Mr. Bennet connected the cryptic dots far faster than they expected, nodding thoughtfully. "Yes, you're an empath, aren't you?"

"Useful little bugger, isn't he?" Claude remarked from the other side of the room. "I made him myself."

"You seem to be a bit of a magnet for them, really."

Perking with interest, Peter accidentally elbowed Claire in the ribs, who yelled in protest and shoved him back. "Don't give me that. It's not like you can get hurt," he said to her, then turned to the more important matter. "There are other empaths? Who are they? How do they control their powers? Did any of them explode?"

"There was only one other we met—Claude was the one who found her, actually, he could probably tell you more than me," Mr. Bennet clarified. "Her name was Katie, and she was a handful."

"A lot like you, as a matter of fact," Claude said, bringing his chair back to all four legs. "It must come with the territory. Anyway, she was as screwed up as you are, abilities going off everywhere, causing all sorts of trouble. Finally, she got sent up to Linderman himself, and apparently she learned to control her powers. The explosions stopped."

"So what happened to her?" Peter asked, frozen in his last pose, game quite forgotten.

Claude shrugged. "Haven't a clue. We lost track of her after a while, and her file went up to Vegas when she did. I know she died a while back, but that doesn' t necessarily mean anything--we've got a dangerous line of work. Point is, we don't really know what finally put her on track."

There was a complicated, substantial silence as they all moved along various routes toward the same conclusion. Predictably, Nathan was the one to voice it. "You know what we need, don't you?" he asked. "We need that file."


	12. Chapter 12

_Dream every night/_

_That one will come true/ _

_  
But only bad ones ever do/_

Candice found it very easy to hate Peter Petrelli when he wasn't in the room. In fact, that was what she had been spending a majority of her time doing—remembering the way he'd flinched when she cut him with her words, the moment when he'd pulled back from the kiss and she'd seen from the look in his eyes that it had all been some kind of a trick. It was an easy and enjoyable pastime, and there wasn't terribly much else she could do, trapped in the cliché-of-guest-bedroom with its needlepoint pillows and dust ruffles. They hadn't even released her hands yet, and she hadn't dared trying to stand up handless yet, so she simply sat with her legs tucked into her, steaming through with impotent rage.

Unfortunately, when Peter came into the room, all her hard work came tumbling down like an upset block castle, and she grasped frantically at her hate but it slid out of her hands, leaving her with only a furious, thirsty sort of _wanting_. She ceased to remember the moment after he kissed her and only remembered the kiss, his searing desperation and the way his lashes framed his closed eyes like a charcoal drawing. It was the first time since she could remember when she hadn't been in absolute control of a partner—and perversely, maybe that was what attracted her.

He sat down in the chair across from her, leaned across the space between them, and pulled the duct tape off her mouth. She ignored the screams of her intense-but-inappropriate crush as his fingers brushed her and masked it with a reproachful glare. "Ow," she complained.

"Nice to see you, too," Peter replied, balling the tape in his hand and tossing it to the other side of the room. "Though I have to admit, I like this new version of our relationship a lot better."

"Thrilled I could help," she said bitingly. "Now are you going to get this tape off my hands, or what? My blood is being restricted and I think I'm developing some sort of clot."

"You can't develop a blood clot from not getting enough blood," he said reasonably.

"Says who?" she snapped childishly.

"Well, I _am_ a nurse," he reminded her, getting to his feet and running a hand through his hair in a way she found particularly attractive. "Stand up, I'll let you free."

She began to struggle to her feet, and after a few seconds she felt his hand on her arm, keeping her from pitching headfirst onto the flimsy-looking nightstand. She leaned carefully into him as he cut away the tape at her wrists, employing her well-practiced talents to make sure him she was touching him _just _enough that he couldn't help but notice, but couldn't suspect her of anything. Even without her abilities, Candice was a seductress of the very highest order, and she was going to give this everything she had left.

Her hands came free and she brought them in front of her, sitting on the decorously floral-patterned bed to rub them back into circulation. "So what do you want?" she asked him bluntly. "I doubt you're here to save my hands from falling off."

He sat back down on the chair, steepling his fingers under his chin. "There are some things that we're trying to work out, and we think you might be able to help us. I need some information on a certain file."

She crossed her arms, clearly preparing to be obnoxiously stubborn. "And what are you going to do if I say no?"

Peter leaned back in the wicker chair, hearing it crackle beneath him, quietly throwing out his hope that it wouldn't come down to this. He should have known better than to think Candice would cooperate. "Listen," he said quietly, holding her cocoa-brown eyes with his lighter ones. "I'm not going to hurt you, and you know that." She smirked insolent agreement at him, but he wasn't done. "However, there are at least two people outside that door who have no such compunctions, and neither of them like you very much. Do you really want to play this game?"

"Bennet," she said with some trepidation—Peter was right, he wouldn't think twice about anything he did to her, he had never had much of a problem with blood, "and…who? Nathan? I suppose I could see him getting his hands dirty."

"His hands are already dirty," Peter said bluntly. "You wouldn't be anything more than a footnote, a single dead fish in an massive moral oil spill. You see, none of us _cares_ about you, Candice, and quite a few of us hate you. There's only one way for you to preserve your value in this situation."

"And what about when I tell you everything I know? What happens if I don't have the answers you need?" she shot at him, standing and stalking over to him until she was close enough to see the white scar slashing over his brow. "I know how this works, Peter Petrelli, and I dare you to tell me I'll be alive in a week, despite anything I do."

"If you tell us what we need, I'll make sure nothing happens to you," he promised immediately, with a straight, sincere honesty that rocked her back on her foundations of deception and careless vice.

_He means it_, she realized, _he hates me but he'll protect me. God, this kid is a _saint_—how has he _survived_ all these years, in this world, in this family? _"Fine," she said, voice glittering with hard malice. "Go get them, I'll answer your damn questions."

He turned away from her and walked toward the door—giving her exactly the opportunity she'd been waiting for. The instant his back was to her, she grabbed the chair and swung it at him with all her strength, breaking it across the back of his head. He crumpled, dropping to the carpet, and she pounced on him, pinning him to the ground with her knees and pulling one spike-heeled shoe off her foot to use as a weapon. As she brought it down with savage force, he caught her wrist and held it, forcing them both into an awkward, tangled standstill.

He was so close she could smell him, soap and coffee and cinnamon chewing gum, feel him breathing against her neck. She couldn't help it—she kissed him. For a startled split-second, he let her, his mouth opening under hers, all his muscles frozen, tense—then he came slamming back into focus, throwing her off him with telekinesis, hard enough that she hit the wall behind them. They both scrambled to their feet and stood staring at each other, Peter stunned, Candice snarling like a cat, teeth bared.

Feeling as if he'd survived some sort of natural disaster, Peter stumbled out of the room, nearly running into Nathan, who stood with his head down, arms folded outside the door, a still life of patience and quiet danger. Taking in Peter's tousled appearance and shell-shocked eyes, he asked quickly, "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," Peter said vaguely, looking back into the room. "Yeah. I'm fine."


	13. Chapter 13

_You don't see what you possess/_

_A beauty calm and clear/ _

_  
It floods the sky and blurs the darkness/_

_Like a chandelier/_

"I don't get it!" Claire said loudly from her perch on the white plastic chair at the edge of the tennis court. Both men looked up at her as if only just remembering she was there, pausing their brutal sparring session to address her concerns. Peter swept his sweaty hair out of his eyes (even with the forced Sylar-haircut, it was still long enough to fall endearingly all over his face—he'd threatened to cut it off, but she didn't think he'd go through with it, or at least she hoped not) and came over to rest on the arm of her deck chair, and Claude trailed half a step behind, looking dangerously vibrant in the apple-crisp autumn air.

"What don't you get, sweetheart?" Claude asked with surprisingly real interest—in many ways, Claude seemed like another uncle these days, or third father (God forbid, she was confused enough already). He seemed to take a nearly-forgotten joy in her existence, never too busy to explain or comfort.

"Well," Claire said, swinging her feet where they dangled off the edge of the chair, "I understand the drilling and the focus exercises just fine—they make sense to me. What I _don't _understand is how it's helping Peter for you to beat his head in."

Claude flipped his staff over in his hands, grinning at her. "Right, I forget sometimes," he said. "You two are from a generation where it's believed that children should be coddled and kept indoors, protected from internet predators and skin cancer and papercuts. Sorry, but I don't buy that. You can't filter life, can't water it down, or it's not living. I believe in preparing for reality, in not pulling my punches even if I break some bones, because sooner or later the world is going to get at you, and isn't going to care if you're not ready."

"I guess that makes sense," Claire said dubiously. "But—do you have to hit him so _hard_?"

"What do you want me to do, mollycoddle him? Because you can bet your Sylar isn't going to. Besides, there are some people who need to be hit on a regular basis, and your uncle is one of them."

"Hey," Peter protested, busy healing a nasty fist-sized bruise on his arm.

"In any case, I think the proof is in the pudding," Claude said with satisfaction. "He's getting better every time we practice. You should have seen him when we first met, he was a walking land mine. He needs the external stimulus, the bruises, the immediate consequences."

"I still wish you'd let me use my telekinesis," Peter complained. "It would be a completely different story, believe me."

"That's the point," Claude explained. "You've got a handle on the telekinesis, it doesn't _need_ any more work. What we're trying to find out is what you picked up from that Sylar character, what new abilities you have."

Peter saw Claire recoil slightly at Sylar's name, and he hugged her around her shoulders, feeling an instinctual twinge of angry protectiveness. "Don't worry about him, Claire," he told her, though privately he sympathized with her reaction. "The police have him, he won't be bothering you again."

She smiled sadly, fear still burning like a pilot light, unextinguished, in the back of her eyes. "They can't hold him," she said, choosing not to swallow Peter's reassurances. "They don't know what he's capable of."

"True," Claude admitted freely, "but I very much doubt he's still in police custody. If I know my old boss, he's got him tucked away in some holding cell by now—and believe me, Sylar will find it rather harder to get away from Linderman."

Peter thought she still looked unconvinced, but before he could continue arguing her down to security, she caught sight of her father crossing the lawn, headed towards them. She jumped up from the lawn chair and ran to meet him—seeing him was still a novelty, after their days of separation, and she had to admit that his presence was more comforting than all Peter and Claude's words put together.

"Hi, honey," he said, hugging her. "Are you busy? I thought I might take you shopping, get you out of those clothes you've been wearing for two days."

"I am _never_ too busy for shopping," she said, mock-seriously. "Claude and Peter can do without an audience."

She waved a cheerful goodbye to her uncle and her adoptive uncle, leaving them on the tennis court with the distinct feeling that someone had taken the sun away.

"Well," Claude said briskly, raising his staff. "Shall we?"

---

Claire was glad that Nathan had come on the shopping trip—she needed to get used to seeing her two dads in the same room, standing side-by-side, since neither of them seemed likely to leave her life anytime soon. Besides, she was starting to genuinely _like_ Nathan, his clever snappy conversation, his intelligence and easy confidence. If nothing else, it was good that he'd joined them simply because her father had absolutely no taste in clothes. He stuck grimly to his basic three-piece suits, and even those usually had to be picked out by her mother. Nathan, however, knew everything there was to know about image, and always looked razor-sharp in whatever he wore. She had a feeling that if she were to ask _him _if a peach top went with a cream shoe, he would do more than stare at her blankly or laugh, as her father was inclined to do.

Being the homegrown Odessa girl that she was, she wasn't entirely prepared for the massive shopping complex Nathan took them to, a towering giant of commercialism that made her teenage heart skip several happy beats. She dove into it with gusto, dragging the unfortunate men to and fro as she tore through store after store, eating through glossy chain shops and localized boutiques like she thought they'd disappear. They followed protectively behind her, intently discussing politics and global issues that Claire automatically blocked out, ignoring them and their adult world in favor of jeans that fit her just right at the waist.

As Mr. Bennet and Nathan waited for Claire outside a dressing room, Mr. Bennet asked. "You're married, aren't you? I haven't met your wife."

Nathan gave him a sardonic smile, leaning on a nearby rack of clothes. "My mother cleverly sent her off to a retreat when Claire showed up. The last thing she needs to deal with is a sixteen-year-old love child—I've already given her enough grief to last a lifetime."

"Funny how that works," Mr. Bennet said thoughtfully. "No matter how hard you try to protect them, your family always suffers side effects from your actions."

"I hate it," Nathan said broodingly, putting his chin on his hands.

"So do I," Mr. Bennet said, "but what can you do? There are some things that cross the lines most people try to draw for themselves, but people like you and me know when you have to kill your conscience and step over."

"Exactly," Nathan said. "It's not a matter of ethics, it's a matter of survival, and if blurring the lines is what it takes, then you blur them. I've always been comfortable with morally gray."

Mr. Bennet's head snapped up to Nathan, startled by the unexpected blow of déjà vu, and then he smiled, realizing that this was a man he could work with, could respect, even.

Claire came out of the dressing room, walking toward them with an exaggerated runway strut, and both men blanched visibly, standing straight up. She was wearing a tight red dress with a slit up the side that made her look five years older, and consequently gave both her fathers palpitations of the heart.

"Absolutely not, young lady," Mr. Bennet scolded.

"Take that off immediately," Nathan said, scandalized. "You look like a prostitute."

Claire, who had prepared for this reaction (barring the 'prostitute' comment—she wasn't used to that kind of bluntness), stuck out her chin and turned to the mirror, examining herself.

"I think I look great," she defended. "I _am _sixteen, you know, I'm not going to be wearing sweats and kneesocks."

"I don't care what you wear, as long as it covers you fully," Mr. Bennet said sternly, "and that dress does _not _meet the requirement."

Sulking, she stalked back to the dressing room, and the men exchanged meaning glances. "Sometimes I forget that she's a teenage girl," Nathan said with a sigh. "This is going to be harder than it looks, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes," Mr. Bennet assured him, sounding amused. "A _lot_ harder."


	14. Chapter 14

_No, you won't disarm my heart/  
The last gift you'll ever get from me/  
Is the combination or the key/_

"Candice has proved to be very cooperative," Mr. Bennet said. "That is, if we are to assume she isn't lying or holding back, which would be a dangerous assumption at best." He glanced around at the other people in the library; they were a formidable bunch, he had to admit—once you looked past their first appearances, you began to see the straight-backed vengeance in their postures, the jaded tenacity in their eyes. Yes, they would do quite nicely. "In any case, I don't think we have any choice but to follow her information—we'll simply have to do it with our eyes wide open."

"What have you learned?" Angela wanted to know, voice full of focused purpose that belied her domestic appearance.

"She didn't know much about the file we needed," Nathan told her, "except its whereabouts. It's in Las Vegas as we thought, in Linderman's offices—she was able to give us some location specifics that should be helpful."

"Based on this," Mr. Bennet continued, "there only seems to be one course of action that's feasible. After we're sure he has complete control of Candice's ability, we need Peter to infiltrate Linderman's office as Candice and take the file."

Peter gave a muffled groan, which was ignored by everyone but Claire, who leaned over and patted the top of his head solicitously.

He tag-teamed off to Nathan, who caught the thread with ease and kept going. "Her information will be very helpful in this. She has a lot of details concerning the layout and workings of these offices—it seems that she and Linderman were very close for some time."

"How close?" Claude asked, picking up on the implications of Nathan's word choice.

"Well," Nathan said helplessly, "it appears they were lovers."

There was a crash from the other side of the room as Peter fell out of his chair. "No," he said vehemently, gesturing at them from the floor. "_Absolutely not_."

"Oh, come on," Claude said gleefully. "Be a team player, here, we're all making sacrifices."

Peter struggled to his feet and retreated back to the bookshelves, glaring at all of them as if he suspected they were about to charge. "No, no, _no,_" he repeated loudly. "There is _no _way, I will _die _first."

"You just might," snapped Nathan. "It would do you good to remember that you're the one who's the problem here, Pete. We're trying to save you and we're trying to save New York City, and the only person we have access to is Candice. If you've got another solution, I'm sure we'd be glad to hear it."

"There might be something," Claire interjected hesitantly, self-conscious as they all turned their attention on her, laserlike. "Peter could use the Candice form to get to Thompson, and then we could take Thompson, and Peter could pretend to be him to go see Linderman." Feeling slightly foolish for thrusting her ideas under the scrutiny of so many hyper-intelligent adults, she defended, "I mean, we're trying to take down The Company anyway, right? Isn't that the point?"

"Absolutely," Peter agreed quickly. "I like her idea much better."

"I actually like it, too," Mr. Bennet said slowly. "As I understand their relationship ended some time ago, Thompson would more likely be able to access the file."

"That's true," Nathan said. "Besides—no offense, Pete—but I wouldn't put money on your ability to play Candice for any amount of time. Thompson is a far safer bet; that's very smart, Claire. It must run in the family." Claire grinned sunnily at him, thrilled he was comfortable enough to tease her.

"You are, however, going to have to impersonate her for a time," Claude reminded, "in order to get to Thompson, and you're going to have to give a damn convincing performance. You know what that means, right?"

---

When Peter came into her room, Candice thought he looked so adolescently mutinous that she nearly laughed at him. However, there was just enough real anger in his eyes that she wisely refrained, not wishing to be snapped in half or impaled by a bedpost. He didn't say a word to her, didn't even look at her, only stormed over to the armchair, sat down, put headphones in his ears, and began to actively ignore the world.

Apparently he'd lost the argument. She'd heard him and his brother outside her door, quarrelling in a distinctive sibling fashion about whether or not Peter needed to be around Candice. Nathan had argued that he needed to acclimate to her, to know her so well that he could pick up her smallest habits without thinking. Peter hadn't had any sort of persuasive counter beyond "I don't want to" and "I _really _don't want to," so he'd here he was—she, of course, knew why he didn't want to be around her. She wondered if he was afraid of her, or simply hated her; either presented interesting possibilities.

She was content to watch him for a while, admiring the picture he made—any photographer would have loved to capture the sight of him curled in the chair, legs braced asymmetrically against the wall, head bent in fierce rebellion with his hair cutting soft lines across his eyes. Before long, though, this pastime paled and she began to feel restless, minutes stretched by his presence, rubbing and bothering as they hadn't before.

"Hey," she said experimentally. There was no response, and that irritated her—she wasn't used to going unnoticed. "HEY," she said, more loudly. This time, his eyes snapped open and he gestured innocently to his ears, indicating that he couldn't hear her with a faux-apologetic shrug. He closed his eyes again and settled back into the chair, but Candice had had enough. She removed her left shoe, took swift aim, and threw the black heel at his head. She missed slightly; it hit him in the shoulder, and he started violently as it struck, pulling out his headphones and looking at her with stunned consternation. _That's better, _she thought with satisfaction. "I'm bored," she told him matter-of-factly. "Pay attention to me."

"Right, that's _both_ of your shoes you've tried to kill me with, now," he said, irritated. "Any other weapons concealed on your person I should know about?"

She let her body slide back into seductive-pose languor, making ridiculous eyes at him. "Why don't you come find out?"

He winced painfully—he'd walked straight into that one. It had been very hard to explain to Nathan why he didn't want to be alone in a room with Candice. It was difficult to justify, short of telling his brother that she'd kissed him—and given Nathan's _last _reaction, that didn't seem like a good idea. "Why did you kiss me?" he asked her abruptly.

She did a swift evaluation of all possible answers she could give, and chose the easiest one. "Because I think you're sexy."

"Uh-huh. Well, I'm flattered—"

"You should be."

"—but you do it again, and I'll kill you."

She was surprised at his forcefulness, but the feeling was quickly overtaken by angry, obstinate contrariness, fury that he had the audacity to tell her what to do, chafed to explosion by her own helplessness. The buildup momentum of her pique took her off the bed and across the room, grabbing him by the collar and pulling him out of the chair. "So kill me," she hissed, and kissed him, a harsh violent kiss full of frustration and challenge.

She let him pull away when the door opened behind them, but it was too late. Nathan was frozen halfway into the room, staring at his brother with slackjawed horror. "Peter," he said. "_What the hell is going on here_?"


	15. Chapter 15

_You find all of your ugly meanings/  
In all of the things I find beautiful/  
Do you see the fall is coming?/  
Come, I'm falling into you/_

Peter refused to let himself look guilty—it was hard, because he _felt _guilty under his brother's disgusted, disproving glare, felt like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "For the last time, Nathan, I didn't kiss her, _she _kissed _me._"

Nathan looked ready to scream, livid with barely-contained destructive rage. "I really don't care who kissed who," he said, biting off each word. "What I want to know is _why _you were kissing her _at all_."

"I don't know," Peter said uncomfortably, looking at his hands. "She just _jumped_ me, it wasn't my fault."

"What, did she hold a gun to your head?" he asked, knifeblade sarcastic. "Peter, we've got enough to deal with, trying to save the world and all—I do _not _need you running around with some skank who, may I remind you, is the _enemy_!"

"Would you just listen to me?" Peter shouted back. "The _last _thing I wanted to do was kiss that woman. I'm not fifteen years old and I'm not stupid—this isn't going to be a problem."

"You know what, I wish I could believe you!" Nathan yelled, shaking his head in a way that reminded Peter vividly of their father.

Claire poked her head into the room, mouth open to ask a question, faltering slightly when she saw the death-glowers blackening their faces. "Oh—" she said, hesitating. "Is this a bad time?"

Nathan whirled on her, throwing his hands in the air. "Yes, Claire, this is a bad time! I don't understand why you have to bother me, you already _have_ a father! You're always in the _way_—you make things harder for anyone who's stupid enough to love you, because we've all got to _save _you all the time! Well, you know what? The saving thing? It gets _really_ old."

Claire stared at him for a moment, paralyzed by the unwarranted onslaught, eyes bright with shocked tears—then she fled, disappearing out of the room in a patter of tennis-shoed footsteps. Peter grabbed Nathan's shoulder and jerked him around, appalled and angry enough to forget his own considerable troubles. "I can't believe you just said that to her! She's _sixteen_!"

Nathan swatted his hand away, tired of playing well with others, of biting his tongue in half, of being one of the good guys. "You know what, Pete? I am _done._"

Mr. Bennet entered the room, looking fully as furious as Nathan, ready and willing to tangle with him. "What was that?" he asked, stabbing a finger out of the room. "What did you say to my little girl?"

"Your little girl," Nathan snorted. "_Your _little girl. Do you really think I'm the only one she's crying about? Why don't you tell her what happened to her mom and brother, huh?"

Mr. Bennet crossed the room in three quick steps, coming nose-to-nose with Nathan. "At least I didn't just send them away when they became inconvenient," he replied coldly. "When was the last time you saw your sons? Boarding school is _such_ a handy invention, isn't it? And what about Claire—would you have shipped _her_ off to Massachusetts the first time she gave you a problem? It's just terrible, how your family always seems to get in your way."

Claude had wandered into the room in between blows, drawn to the yells like a spectator to a car wreck. Caught up in their own teeth-bared mêlée, neither of them noticed him until he spoke. "Hey," he shouted. "Sorry to break up your Alpha male showdown, but don't you're both getting a bit off track? Remember the New York apocalypse? Or are you too busy bickering like children to save your own lives?"

"And what would you know about that?" Mr. Bennet said cuttingly. "Thus far, _your _only solution seems to be running away and hiding."

"Well, excuse me for living when you so clearly wanted me dead," Claude, caught up despite himself. "If you'll recall, Bennet, the only thing I was running from was _you_. My point was, this is too important for the mess you're making of it—we have a plan to worry about, here."

"A plan," Nathan said disbelievingly. "A _plan_. Who do we think we are, the Justice League?" He pushed past Mr. Bennet and walked toward the door. "Excuse me, gentlemen, but I've got a life to live and an election to win, and you're not helping with either."

"You have no idea what's at stake here, do you?" Mr. Bennet shot icily at his back. "You're simply not capable of seeing beyond your own selfish goals."

"No," Nathan turned, pulled back into battle. "No, I really try not to, and that's why I accomplish them. I thought you understood about making sacrifices."

"I'm sorry—when you spoke of sacrifices, I didn't know you meant the Aztec blood variety. I apologize for overestimating you, Mr. Petrelli; it appears that your definition of 'morally grey' doesn't quite match up with mine."

Nathan brought his hand up to his temple, struggling to be reasonable and adult, telling himself firmly that it wouldn't help anything to punch Mr. Bennet in the face. "Look," he said with his best campaign smile. "I really don't have the time or energy for this. If you have a problem, just—stick a Post-it note on my door, type me up a memo, I don't care, but _don't bother me_. I have enough on my plate. And you, Peter," he turned to deliver an ultimatum to his brother, but Peter wasn't sitting where he'd been before. "Peter?"

He made a quick three-sixty-degree turn, scanning the library to no avail—Peter was gone.

---

"Hey."

When Claire heard the voice behind her, she scrubbed her eyes quickly with the back of her hand, unsuccessfully trying to erase the signs of tears. Peter climbed up on the porch railing, sitting next to her and putting a steadying, comforting arm around her. Without thinking, she put her head on his shoulder, no longer caring if he saw her cry.

"Are you okay?" he asked gently.

"You'd think I would be," she said hollowly. "I'm Miracle Girl, the indestructible wonder, right?"

"I don't think it works like that."

"You know, for a girl who can't die, I really seem to need a lot of protecting."

"Claire, you can't let yourself think about the things that Nathan said. He was really upset, he didn't mean it—"

"No, he was right," she said determinedly. "I'm so _passive_, all the time—I get into trouble constantly, but I can never get out of anything by myself. I'm that girl from the movies, the one who you hate because she stands around and screams while the hero takes on the world to save her. You're just thinking, 'you idiot, why don't you _do _something, why don't you help him?', but she never does anything but scream." She laughed bitterly. "Save the cheerleader, save the world, right? Well, maybe I should have saved myself."

Peter took hold of her shoulders and turned her so that she was facing him. "Claire, look at me," he commanded. With difficulty, she pulled her blue eyes up to him, and he locked her there with the concern and conviction in his own eyes. "You're sixteen, naturally sweet, and usually about fifty pounds lighter than anyone who attacks you. Add that to the fact that you get attacked on a ridiculously regular basis, and there isn't a person alive who could blame you for your actions. You never should have gone through any of this, and it's silly to expect yourself to respond like some kind of Supergirl. There's nothing shameful about being normal—and that means being scared, freezing up, going into shock. Weird freak show you may be, but you're still only human."

She nodded, self-assurance talked back into workable shape. "You're going after Thompson, aren't you?" she asked unexpectedly, and he pulled away from her, alarmed.

"What makes you think that?"

She gave him a watery half-smile. "You're completely transparent, Peter, you should know that by now." She nodded to the house, where they could still hear voices raised, bickering with terrible intensity. "Besides, it's pretty obvious they aren't going to get anything done, not with the global power struggle going on in there. _Someone_ has to grab the reins, and quick."

"Fine," he admitted, hands up, "you caught me. I was going to leave right now—I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I've got Candice's ability down now, I'll be able to do it—and while I'm gone they can get over themselves."

"You're taking me with you."

"What? Absolutely not."

"Come on, Peter," she pressed. "You can't do it by yourself—you need someone to watch Thompson while you go to Linderman, for one, and there's a million other things you can't do alone. What are you going to do, take one of them?" She gestured inside as a particularly sharp remark came slicing out to them. "I need this," she told him steadily, allowing only a slight undertone of begging into her voice.

He squeezed her hand. "Okay," he said quietly. "Let's go."


	16. Chapter 16

_There is a storm in the distance/  
The wind breathing warning of its imminence/  
There is a lighthouse five hundred yards down/  
You and I will be safe there/_

"Brad Pitt," Claire commanded.

Obedient, Peter began to twist and blur his form kaleidoscopically, jaw getting squarer, hair bleaching to blond. "What do you think?" he asked when the transformation was complete, grinning at her in a distinctly un-Peter-like movie star way.

"Turn back, turn back!" she said, giggling. "You're giving me incestuous thoughts!"

He laughed and shifted into his own body. "He's way too old for you," he said sternly, watching the broad, thick-fingered hands mold themselves into his long, articulated ones with only a small pang of disorientation. He was finally getting used to this ability, feeling confident enough to think that they might just pull this off. His show-face bravado was only for Claire, to hold her head above water—when he really stopped to think about what he was doing, it made him feel stupidly audacious and very afraid. He'd spent two days in the care of these people, and it ranked right up with the most horrible experiences of his life thus far. Now here he was, apparently desperate to run back into their clutches, and he wondered what, exactly, he was thinking.

"Humphrey Bogart," was Claire's next request, snapping him out of his depressive downspiral—if for no other reason, he was glad he'd taken her along because she seemed to be able to pull him out of his own self-doubt with only a smile or a gesture. He'd never had a niece before, and he was finding the whole experience delightful; he felt as if he'd been waiting his whole life to have someone to spoil and entertain—in some way, he had _known_ she was that person from the very first time he'd met her. Intense, visceral connections like they'd had simply didn't happen every day.

"Humphrey Bogart?" he said, surprised. "How do you even know who that is?"

"My dad has a thing for old movies," she explained, rolling her eyes. "_Casablanca_ was one of the few that I actually liked."

"I assume that would be your stepdad and not Nathan that you're talking about?" Peter asked. "Because I think Nathan hates _Casablanca_."

"Yes, I meant my stepdad," Claire confirmed, trying not to think about it so that she wouldn't get sick with missing him—so far, she'd been able to beat the feeling down by convincing herself she was angry at him, but she knew that wouldn't hold her for long.

"You know, I'm starting to get a sense of how incredibly confusing your family relationships are—we practically have a soap opera, here."

"People in soap operas fall in love a lot and come back from the dead," she said optimistically, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. "There are worse things."

"Well, we've certainly got the back-from-the-dead part down," he said wryly. "Though I do think I've got you beat in the death count."

"Nope, sorry," she argued blithely. "I've died three times, too: I got a stick through my head, got shot, and got blown up by a radioactive crazy man. We're tied."

"I have a feeling I might pull ahead, after this," he said, feeling the unwelcome weight of reality trying to settle onto his shoulders.

"We're not going to think about that," Claire said resolutely. "That's for us to deal with tomorrow, and there isn't any point dwelling on what could go wrong and ruining our night."

"Yeah, you're right," he admitted. "Sorry for being such a downer."

"I'll forgive you if you go make us some popcorn," she said, pushing him off the couch and picking up the remote. "I'm going to see if _Casablanca_ is on."

---

Mr. Bennet entered Nathan's office without knocking, which made him angry, but not angry enough to start another fight over it—he still hadn't gotten his energy back from the last one, and Nathan knew how to pick his battles. Mr. Bennet, face unnervingly unreadable, non-interpretable, crossed the room and dropped a piece of paper on Nathan's desk.

"What's this?" Nathan asked, picking it up.

"You told me to write you a memo if there was a problem," Mr. Bennet said flatly. "I wrote you a memo."

Nettled at having his words thrown back in his face, Nathan glanced at the paper—it was set up in a normal memo format, but it only had one line. "'Peter and Claire are gone'," he read, petty annoyance suddenly burned away by concern. "What? What do you mean, they're _gone_?"

"I mean, I've looked everywhere for them and they aren't here," Mr. Bennet said tautly.

"Where did they go? When did you last see them? Do you think The Company got them?" Nathan shot, rapid-fire, trying not to panic.

"That's what I thought at first, but it's not likely," Mr. Bennet told him. "I checked their rooms, and most of their things are missing. I doubt the Company would have given them time to pack, so my guess would be that they just…left."

"Oh no," Nathan said, closing his eyes, "they've gone after Thompson, haven't they? Those little fools."

"Indeed," Mr. Bennet said grimly.

Nathan pulled open one of his desk drawers and took out the gun that he'd kept there ever since Mr. Bennet had tried to kidnap him in Las Vegas. "We need to go after them," he said shortly. "Peter is sweet and he's very brave, but he's completely incapable of taking care of himself, he's got no common sense. From what I've seen of Claire, I take it she's the same type, and the combination of the two of them could very well be lethal."

"My thoughts exactly," Mr. Bennet said. "Now, I know that we've had some—differences, but I am absolutely willing to get over them in order to keep my daughter safe. Whatever I may think of you as a person, there's still no one else I'd rather have at my back in a crisis situation."

"Agreed," Nathan said. "I assure you, there will be no more distractions and no more arguments, not while we're on business."

"Claude can watch Candice while we're away," Mr. Bennet told him. "With any luck, we'll only be a few days."

"All right," Nathan said, sliding the clip into his gun with a cold mechanical click. "Let's do this."

---

Peter hung the phone up, distinctly uneasy with the knowledge that there was really no going back now. He'd jumped in the river, and sink or swim, there was no changing course and no pressing pause. It was a feeling a little like being drunk—heady, dizzying, and terrifyingly out of control.

"Well?" Claire asked impatiently, trying to read his face for any indication of how the phone call had gone.

"He bought it," Peter told her. "He's coming."


	17. Chapter 17

_This chaos, this calamity/  
This garden once was perfect/  
Give your immortality to me/  
I'll set you up against the stars/_

Claire and Peter were sitting side-by-side on the couch, watching the door with such intensity that Peter was mildly afraid they might light it on fire—after all, they still didn't know all the abilities he'd acquired from Sylar; door ignition could very well be one of them.

"Remember, the instant the doorbell rings, you go into the bedroom," he reminded her compulsively.

"I know," she said with a small, tense smile. "You've told me twice already."

"Sorry," he apologized. "I'm just…nervous."

They had been up since six in the morning, both having slept fitfully with the prospect of meeting Thompson the next day. They'd tried to pretend they felt fine, glossing over their stress with a fragile veneer of forced cheerfulness; Claire had even attempted to make them pancakes, but that had ended in disaster, Peter eventually having to extinguish a small fire with his freezing ability. They had laughed about it and ordered room service, but as they day went on, their laughs had gotten more and more strained, their nerves thinned to nothing from the interminable wait. Finally, a half an hour before Thompson had said he would come, they'd given in and sat down to wait in front of the door, tension humming and crackling like static in the air.

"And you know how to use the tranquilizer?" he couldn't help asking.

"Yes, Peter," she sighed, raising the gun. "I just pull the trigger, it's not hard."

"I know," he admitted. "Sorry."

"It's okay," she soothed, giving him a quick hug. "We've got this. Everything is going to go fine."

"I hope so," he said, running a hand fretfully through his hair.

Suddenly, the nasty flat two-tone of the doorbell slammed into the silence, shattering it into a thousand pieces. Peter and Claire leapt up and sprinted in opposite directions, promptly ran into each other, and untangled themselves as quickly and silently as they could, hoping that Thompson wasn't listening terribly hard. Claire saw Peter shifting into the form of Candice as she went into the bedroom, waving a hand at her frantically as he prepared to open the door. She closed herself into the room and crossed her fingers for luck.

Peter opened the door in a calculatedly casual manner, forcing himself to be coolly analytical as he came face-to-face with Thompson for the first time. He took a mental picture—he'd had a much easier time remembering things lately, he wasn't sure why—for later reference, for the time when he would have to give a world-class representation of this man. He was slightly older but solid-looking, craggy and classical with black-to-gray hair in shades and patches. He looked entirely self-aware and mildly suspicious, eyebrows slightly raised in a seemingly permanent skepticism. Peter studied his unsmiling, incisive eyes and slashed line of a mouth, wondering if he could ever possibly imitate this man, who seemed to look straight through to faults, seeing in layers of deception.

"Thompson, hey," he said as he wrapped up his examination. "You're early. Is something wrong, or did you just miss me too much to wait?" He was pleased to find himself authentically echoing Candice's insolent tones, functioning on autopilot while he waited for his brain to kick into gear.

"Less traffic than I thought there would be," Thompson said succinctly, stepping inside. "It must be the rain."

"Oh, is it raining? I guess I wouldn't know, seeing as I _haven't seen the outside of this room in five days_."

Thompson sighed, looking patiently unfazed at the comment—Peter figured he was used to Candice's snarky self-absorption, if he'd worked with her at all. He'd taken a bit of a risk, talking to her superior like this, but it had been an educated guess—if there was anything he admired about Candice, it was that she was afraid of absolutely no one.

"I'm sorry, Candice," he said, not sounding sorry at all. "I know this is a criminal waste of your talents, but I assure you that these men are pivotal to what we're doing."

"Right. Pivotal."

"Which is why I was so concerned when you told me what had been going on with the younger one. Explain fully what's been happening, please, I don't think I got it fully on the phone." He strode into the room with careless command, mapping it with his eyes before he sat down.

"Sure thing," Peter said, swinging the door closed behind him. "Do you want a cup of coffee? I've got some in the kitchen."

Thompson sliced an odd look at him. "You know I don't drink coffee," he said.

Peter winced inwardly. _Strike one_. "No, but you should," he covered as composedly as he knew how. "You _need _a harmless vice, Thompson. You know, something besides kidnapping and killing people." Peter couldn't help that dig—in Candice's voice, it could go unnoticed, checking out with her natural obnoxiousness. Thompson _looked_ at him again, that in-control inscrutable look that made Peter worry for their plan. "Okay, fine—business. So, yesterday, around two o'clock I start hearing all this noise in Peter's room. I go in there to see what's going on, and the kid is literally on the floor, shaking like an epileptic, eyes rolled back in his head and everything."

"Interesting," Thompson said.

"Whatever. Doesn't make _my _job any easier. Anyway, it stopped after a while, but it's happened three more times since then. I don't know much about empaths—they were always a _little_ too touchy-feely for me—but I think he might be overloading. The control collar is probably piling it all up inside of him, stopping it up like a dam, you know? I'm hoping he'll explode, or something."

"Be careful what you ask for, Candice," Thompson said. _He knows_, Peter realized, _he knows about the bomb._ "Where is Mr. Petrelli now?" he asked authoritatively, standing up.

"In the other room," Peter lied, getting to his feet as well in order to guide Thompson through this crucial phase of their plan. "But really, enough about me—how's it going in Texas? Everything sorted out okay?"

"Not hardly. We still haven't tracked down Bennet—he seems to have vanished into thin air. The other one, Parkman, we've located—he ran straight back to his house in California, no sense of undercover at all. We'll send someone for him soon, but for now our priority is getting Primatech functional again." He turned to walk into the second room, and Peter thought _now, now, now_ furiously to Claire, straining to hear the sound of her door opening.

There was an angry hiss of release, and then something shot past Peter to bury itself in Thompson's back. The man gave a small cry of surprise and dropped, forcing Peter to jump back several feet as he fell to the carpet. He stared up at Peter, surprise changing to terrible realization as his form ripped and rippled back to normal.

"You," he said accusingly, speech slurring as the tranquilizer drained into his system. "Clever bastard."

And then he was out.


	18. Chapter 18

_Darkness, darkness everywhere/_

_Do you feel all alone?/  
The subtle grace of gravity/_

_The heavy weight of stone/_

The gun looked very strange in Claire's hands—it swallowed them and seemed to distort their fragility with its bulky menace. She looked small and pale and determined, with two spots of color high in her cheeks that made her look like a queen or a china doll. For a moment, Peter wanted to snatch the ugly thing away from her, but he remembered her words about the people who protected her and managed to restrain himself.

"Keep it close to you, okay?" he told her firmly. "I doubt you'll need it, but it never hurts to be safe, right?"

She nodded resolutely, and for a second saw past her fear to a deeper level of indomitable grit, and he knew she would be fine.

"I'll be back really soon," he promised, hugging her, feeling the muzzle of the gun press into his collarbone, pinned between them. "I just need to make sure no one's suspicious, and make an appointment with Linderman, and then I'll come straight here."

"Don't worry," she assured. "There's no way Thompson can get free. You take all the time you need."

He kissed her in the top of her head. "You be good," he said, and he left.

---

"Come look at this," Nathan said to Mr. Bennet, calling him from across the room where he was brooding at the window. Nathan knew that it was killing Mr. Bennet to be back in this house. Even with the man's formidable skills at vagary and misdirection, it was clearly apparent that sitting in his own living room with a fast-talking, closed-conscience politician and not his family (never his family again—he had turned over the family picture as soon as they'd walked in) was putting immense strain on him. There were some thoughts that Mr. Bennet could not currently allow himself to think, or they would destroy him—being in his house reminded him of every one of them.

They hadn't had a choice—coming back to Odessa was risky enough, and they didn't dare check into a hotel so close to Primatech headquarters. The Bennet house, on the other hand, was the very last place The Company would expect them to go, so the Bennet house it was.

"What is it?" he asked as he circled behind Nathan, craning his head to look at his laptop screen.

"It's an email," Nathan said, "from Peter."

Mr. Bennet grabbed a chair and pulled it in next to Nathan, attention captured away from his late family members in favor of the one who was still alive. "What? What does it say?"

"He says he's sorry they left without saying anything, he didn't want us following them—too late for that. He says to tell you Claire is fine and you should be proud of her; that they're going after Linderman and they're going to take him down. He says to trust him."

"Obviously not an option," Mr. Bennet mused. "But perhaps this is why we haven't been able to find them. He says they're going after Linderman—does that mean they already have Thompson in custody?"

"I don't know," Nathan said. "Maybe they're better at this than we thought."

---

The instant he entered the hotel room, Peter knew that something was wrong. Instead of the TV chatter and ambient noise of Claire walking about, there was silence, broken only by a quiet, intermittent sobbing sound. Twenty thousand alarm bells went off in his head and he looked the room over for the problem, but Claire was nowhere to be seen. Concern mounting to dread, he followed the barely-audible sound into the bedroom—and found Claire, crying into her knees, shoulders bent over her as if to block out the rest of the world.

When his shadow fell on her, she started violently and looked up, revealing a pattern of blood spattered over her jeans and T-shirt and hair like macabre modern art. He fell to his knees next to her, and she threw her arms around him the as soon as he was close enough, sobbing into his shirt.

"Claire, _what happened_?" he asked her urgently. "Are you okay?"

He felt her gulping for air, trying to break through her tears long enough to explain. "I killed him, Peter," she said brokenly. "God, I _killed _him!"

Peter hadn't so much as glanced at the rest of the room, not after he'd seen Claire—now he looked, and sure enough, Thompson was lying against the opposite wall, four bloody bullet holes punched into his chest. The gun was lying a few feet away from Claire, where she had clearly dropped it.

"He got free, Peter, he must have had a knife or something," she explained in hurried gasps between sobs. "He was loose and he came at me, and I didn't know what to do so I just _shot _him. It was so _easy _and then he was dead—God, _I _deserve to be dead, but I'm never going to be!"

"Shh," he said, pulling her in tighter and stroking her hair soothingly. "It's okay, Claire, it's okay. It's not your fault, honey, you just did what you had to. You're going to be fine."

He cocooned her in his arms until she calmed, minutes or hours later, her sobs softening to shuddering, slow breaths. When he finally thought she was ready for life again, he drew back from her, wiping away the last tear streaks with the back of his hand. "Go take a shower," he told her. "I'll clean this up."

"I should—" she protested.

"No," he told her firmly. "You've had enough blood for one day, I'll do it. You just go get cleaned up, and we'll leave as soon as you're done. We need to get out of here before anyone finds this. I made an appointment with Linderman for Wednesday, and we have a flight to Las Vegas leaving tomorrow morning."

"Stage two," she said, giving him an almost-smile.

"Stage two," he said.

---

Hana Gitelman stared down at the words she had written, her suspicious mind wondering if the message was some kind of a plant, or if it could really be true. About an hour ago, the 'autopilot' parameters she'd set up to filter her ability had flagged this email with a truly alarming amount of red tape, enough to make her transcribe the whole thing down to examine.

'Nathan:' it read, 'I'm sorry that we left without saying anything, but we didn't want any of you to follow us. I wanted to let you know that I'm fine, and tell Mr. Bennet that Claire is okay as well, and that he should be proud of her. We're going after Linderman, and we're going to take him and The Company down. I know you don't think we can do it, but I want you to trust me on this, all right? Please don't come after us. I love you. Peter."

Bennet. Linderman. The Company. This 'Peter' knew exactly what was going on, maybe better than Hana did herself. The most intriguing part was that, apparently, he didn't just know—he planned to do something about it.

Hana would trace this message, and she would find this man. If he really was going after The Company, she would help him. If he was lying, and this was all some kind of a setup—she would kill him.


	19. Chapter 19

_You are the lighthouse, the seamark/  
The tempests created this tide/  
I'm pulled to the black silver ocean/  
Where the current and the heavens collide/_

It was almost half a day before Candice knew it had happened. She began to feel it in her fingers and toes first, like warmth thawing through her after being in the cold. It was like someone taking a blindfold off, or releasing hands that had been tied, and once she realized what it was, she couldn't help but laugh. This was what she had been waiting for.

The collar was out of neurotoxin. They couldn't control her anymore.

---

Claire had never liked flying very much—which was kind of funny, now that she thought about it, considering that both her father and uncle could fly like birds. _It must have skipped a generation_, she thought philosophically, trying to convince herself that it was perfectly natural for a huge metal tube to be hanging suspended in midair, that there was no way that the airplane would simply decide to crash. The guy next to her wasn't helping—apparently not bothering to notice that she was alarmingly underage, he had been unabashedly checking her out, at least until Peter had noticed and leveled a protective-uncle glower at the man. He was still occasionally leering at her when he thought Peter wasn't looking, and she quickly found another reason to hate air travel—whoever you ended up sitting by, you had to deal with for six hours.

She had been having an especially hard time the last hour, because Peter had fallen asleep (how he could, she didn't know, on the bizarre uncomfortable not-a-pillow the flight attendant had given him). Extremely fed up with the stares of her aisle-mate, she turned to him, considering waking him up—and stopped, staring blankly at his hands.

After a few seconds, and a few double-takes to be sure she was really seeing what she thought, she shook him hard. "Peter," she whispered. "Peter, wake up."

His long eyelashes fluttered open (now _that _gene, she _had_ inherited) and he looked up at her, half-awake. "What is it, Claire?" he asked with remarkable patience for someone who'd just been very rudely awakened.

"Peter, you're _glowing,_" she hissed, thrusting one of his hands in front of his face.

Peter stared at his hand—blinked rapidly—stared some more. It was true: he was glowing like a firefly, lit up to the wrist with eerie white fluorescence. Quickly, he stuffed both of his hands under his blanket, where they could be seen only faintly, as if he had been covering up a flashlight. "Claire, why am I glowing?" he asked quietly, trying not to let his voice raise to the panic-pitch that it wanted to.

"Don't ask _me,_" she said. "There's probably someone on the airplane with abilities."

He looked as if he very much wanted to scream. "Well, this is certainly an unforeseen problem," he said. "Do me a favor? Can you kind of look around and…I don't know, see if anyone is glowing?"

As casually as she could manage, she sat up on her knees, scanning the aisles for any unusual lights—there was nothing. "Sorry," she said, dropping back down to her seat. "Everyone looks normal."

"This is just great," he said, exasperated. "How am I supposed to control someone's abilities by associating emotions with them if I _don't know who the person is_?"

"Yeah, really didn't think of this one before," Claire agreed. "Any ideas?"

He looked miserably at his softly glowing hands. "None. Think anyone will notice?"

She raised her eyebrows at him. "More than somewhat."

His snapped his fingers, the sound muffled under the blanket. "Wait—why don't I just—" Without finishing his sentence, he began to blur his hands, shifting them into normal, nonfluorescent ones. "There," he said, uncovering them and inspecting them with satisfaction. "That'll do it."

"You're very smart, Peter," she congratulated him.

"Thanks," he aid dryly. "Let's just hope this is a one-time thing."

---

Claude wasn't very upset at being left behind. He was never one to go haring off on mad schemes, and besides, he had a lot more faith in Peter and Claire than anyone else seemed to. Occasionally annoying as Peter may be, if he said that he was going to do something, he _did_ it, or died trying. It was a kind of throwback honor code, and it was as rare and reliable as anything Claude had ever encountered.

But, Nathan and Mr. Bennet would insist on running after them in a protective jealous frenzy, declaring that they were only for show and were not to be used for practical purposes. At least Claude now understood where Peter had gotten his housepet mentality, if his brother had been hovering around him like this all his life.

He had been left on babysitter watch while they went off to their heroics, and he frankly bid them good riddance. He would far rather live with the world than take it on any day. Candice had been a fairly docile charge so far, never giving him more trouble than an occasional acid remark—which, as the king of acid remarks, he was patently immune to. He brought her food and he ignored her, and she seemed to accept his established routine.

Except for today. Today, when he unlocked the door and entered her room, plate of breakfast muffins in one hand, he found not Candice but _Claire_, sitting pertly on the bed—and like a fool, he fell for it. "Claire?" he gaped. "What are you doing here?"

"I think you've got the wrong room, Claude," she laughed, walking up to him. In retrospect, he berated himself for not seeing through her thin excuses—but at the time, he was too busy gawking to realize what was happening until it was far too late.

Once she got within a few steps of the door, she sprinted for the opening, pushing him aside to get to the hallway. It was then that his brain made the necessary leap, and grabbed for her belatedly, yelling in surprise and frustration. He dropped the muffins and took off after her, but she'd already swung herself onto a windowsill and jumped, landing gracefully on the asphalt and racing away.

He stared out the window, still somewhat trying to understand what had just happened. Candice was gone.

That was very bad.

---

Peter and Claire stood outside of the hotel entrance, luggage in their hands, looking forlornly at the doors. Neither of them had had to say anything—they'd both just stopped there, slamming to a simultaneous halt as if they had hit an invisible wall. Within the past week, they'd had respective traumatic experiences involving hotels, and no matter how many channels the TVs had or how many mints maids left on their pillows, they were feeling sick at the prospect of checking into another one.

Peter wasn't sure how long they had been standing there—long enough to attract puzzled stares, at least—when he began to hear things in his head. For most people, this would have been considered a sign that reservations needed to be booked at the nearest mental hospital, but Peter was thrilled. Mind-reading was one of his least-stable abilities, and he was always happy when he was able to channel it in.

—_look harmless enough, _he heard. _Skinny blond girl and a guy with his hair in his face, what are the chances they're a plant? They haven't done anything suspicious since I've been watching them, God knows I've been watching for long enough—_

"Claire," Peter said evenly. "Don't be obvious about it, but look to your left. Do you see that black-haired woman standing by the van?"

"Yes," Claire said uncertainly, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. "What about her?"

"She's thinking about us," Peter told her. At her quizzical look, he tapped his head. "I can hear her."

"Do you think she's from The Company?" Claire asked nervously, moving closer to him.

"I don't know. I don't think so," Peter told her. "But I think we need to find out."

"Okay, how about this—you go talk to her, and I'll circle around in case she tries anything," Claire suggested.

"Why am I always the bait?" Peter complained.

"It's the big eyes," she teased him. "Now give me the gun."

"Are you sure?" Peter asked, surprised. Given her last experience with that very gun, he hadn't thought she would ever want to touch it again. She was becoming less and less fragile any minute, solidifying like salt crystals before his eyes. He admired the new, competent Claire—he just hoped that she wasn't growing stronger at the price of her innocence.

"Yes," she said grimly setting her jaw.

As discreetly as he could, and with no little apprehension, he handed the gun over to her, then turned and walked in the opposite direction.

Hana only looked away for a moment, overcome by a fit of the coughs from her car's exhaust fumes. When she turned back, though, a single minute later, they were _gone_, neither of them standing where they had been before. She spun slowly, searching the parking lot, but she couldn't see them anywhere.

Suddenly, she heard footsteps directly behind her, and a hand touched her shoulder. With military-instinct reaction time, she grabbed the hand and threw its owner into the van, pressing her forearm against their throat and effectively pinning them in a swift matter of seconds. She had just recognized her victim—it was the man, Peter—when she heard the sound of a gun cocking, inches away from her head.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the blond girl, holding a gun pointed at her with an admirably steady hand. Hana didn't wait to find out if she had the guts to pull the trigger—she snapped her foot up and around, kicking the gun out of the girl's hand and sending it skittering across the pavement.

"Hey!" Peter said, managing to push her arm away from his throat, a little breathless. "Hey, calm down. We're not trying to hurt you, we just want to talk."

Hana had to admit this was probably true—if they had wanted her dead, they would have just shot her at a distance. She moved away from the van, letting Peter up and regarding the pair with healthy suspicion. She slid her van door open and nodded to it.

"Get in," she said shortly. When they didn't move, she said impatiently, "We're making a huge scene, and neither you nor I have the time to deal with the police. Get in or leave."

After exchanging a long, meaning glance, they got in, watching her carefully as they did so. She followed behind them and shut the door, leaving them in windowless semi-dark.

"So talk," she said, brusque and in-control. "What do you want?"

"Just to know why you're following us," Peter said neutrally.

Hana was surprised—she must be losing her touch, if they had seen her tailing them. "Fair enough," she said. "I'm following you because you said you wanted to take down The Company, and I was trying to figure out if you were lying." There—the cards were on the table, and she hoped to God they were aces.

"How do you know that?" the girl asked sharply.

"I read your email," she said simply, ready to come clean for lack of other options—they could choose to believe her or not, but it was too late for polite lies now. "I can access wireless signals with my mind." Their eyebrows flew up in unison, and she found herself suddenly, unaccountably irritated. "I havethis _ability_, all right?" she snapped. "I don't know where it came from, but I'm just _different_."

Peter grinned, brown eyes shining like spent pennies in the hazy half-light. "Small world," he said.


	20. Chapter 20

_I knew this was a dream/ _

_It was too good to be true/  
Coincidences were a bit much too/_

Claire had a massively strong, apparently unconscious talent for drawing people in. Hana could feel it already, after knowing the girl only a few hours—and invisible hand reaching out to her, asking her to take it and come in and be part of Claire's life. Whether she knew it or not, Claire was the focal point of all this—she was the sun and the rest orbited around her. She had brought them together, coalesced them and was now driving them all forward to their unknown fates.

Hana hoped the girl never lost that, the selfless magnetism—if nothing else, it was a fantastic defense mechanism.

Peter, too, was something special—there was far more to him than his eyes would tell her. He had the look of someone carrying a large black problem, festering and unresolved. It was rather at odds with his natural demeanor, sweet and gutsy and bright like a candleflame. She let herself admit she was attracted to him, off in the corner of her mind where she locked such things away. Nothing remarkable, nothing epic—she defied any woman who spent more than five minutes in his charming company not to want to propose marriage on the spot.

It was enough to even make her hope he didn't get himself killed. She'd been extremely uncomfortable with the notion of sending him alone into Camp Linderman, while she and the little Bennet (Bennet's daughter! _That_ had thrown her for a curve—strange bedfellows, indeed) sat in her apartment, twiddling their fingers. However, she had eventually been convinced that short of an extended siege, this was really the only feasible plan.

So it came to be the daughter of her former sworn enemy was sitting on a stool at her bar, eating challah like there was no tomorrow—possibly a smart idea, Hana thought morbidly, considering that there very well might not be.

"This is really good," Claire said, so surprised she forgot to swallow before speaking. "What is it?"

"Challah bread," Hana told her, leaning her elbows on the marble countertop. "It's Israeli."

"Oh," Claire said, looking at the chunk of bread in her hand. "Are you from Israel? I thought you sort of looked like it."

"Yes, I am," Hana said, giving a small smile despite herself, amused at the girl's unabashed bluntness. "I was born in Israel and I lived there, serving in the army, for many years."

"So that's where you learned to fight like that," Claire said, suddenly straight-focus intent. "I was wondering. When you grabbed Peter—I've never seen anyone move so fast." She looked down at her bread, staring at it as if it held all the secrets of the universe, trying to build the courage to ask what she wanted of this woman she barely knew. "Do you think you could teach me?"

"What?" Hana, floored.

"I know what you're thinking," Claire said defensively. "You're thinking I couldn't ever learn anything like that, that I look like a Barbie doll and I'm really fragile. Well, I'm not—I can't get hurt at all, I told you that. I'm a really fast learner, I wouldn't be a problem."

Hana glanced the girl over thoughtfully—she was right, she _did _look like a Barbie, pretty and skinny and blond. That was probably what most people saw when they looked at her, but they didn't know to look for what Hana did—the carefully hidden third-layer grit in her eyes, the seemingly delicate fingers curled into furious fists, the strength of character threaded through her teenage bearing. "Of course I will," she said, jumping lightly off her stool and falling into an easy, open stance. "When do you want to start?"

Claire eyed Hana's ready-to-take-on-ten-battalions posture nervously, suddenly remembering Claude and Peter's brutal training sessions, wondering what on earth she was getting herself in for. _Well,_ she reminded herself grimly, _you asked for it. _She pushed the stool away and stood, brushing challah crumbs off her sweater. "Now," she said.

---

It definitely wasn't the first time Peter had ridden in a limo—as the brother of a Congressional candidate, he was forced into all sorts of limo-enabled functions on a regular basis. However, it _was _the first time he had ridden in a limo while actively wanting to be sick, trying not to think about how quickly he was being driven towards his possible demise.

The Las Vegas skyline had moved steadily in until it surrounded him, sweeping glitzy rhinestones-and-gold buildings that bit into the clouds, pretending to belong, obscenely out of place. Every surface was neon and every breath was filled with smog; it was beautiful and deadly like a siren, a near-authentic imitation of real life. He didn't like it—this was Nathan's world, not his, and it made him feel twitchy.

The limo slid smoothly to a halt outside The Monticello, and Peter took a deep breath, preparing himself for to draw back the curtain and face the real wizard. Despite how inextricably the man had been intertwined with his family, Peter had never so much as seen a picture of the elusive Linderman. Unless the man had three heads (very possible), he trusted himself not to jump and scream when he met him—he did not, however, have any idea what he _would_ do. The scene was set and the lights were going up—he hoped this would go well

He stepped out of the limo, copycatting Thompson's self-aware, grounded posture, buttoning his cuffs as he was ushered into the casino. The black-clad security personnel, completely indistinguishable from each other, hurried him past loudly blinking slot machines and cocktail waitresses wearing too much makeup, into a cleaner side-venue. The plush carpeting faded into tile, and soon he could hear healthy, busy sounds coming from the door ahead of him.

It was the kitchen. Which was surprising, to say the least—wild visions passed before Peter's eyes of being stabbed to death by chefs with butcher knives, but they only lasted an instant and he had composed himself again by the time they stopped. Taking his bearings now that the casino wasn't rushing by him at an alarming rate, he found himself staring across a stainless-steel table at a grandfatherly white-haired man who seemed to be ignoring him, intent on slicing a loaf of bread.

As he began to realize who this man probably was, his body tried to do a double take, but he muscled firmly past the reaction and analyzed the situation. _So this is Linderman. Interesting. _

Linderman finished cutting his bread and set the knife down, finally looking up at Peter. "Ah, Thompson," he said congenially. "I've been expecting you." Behind him, a tall Hispanic chef flipped a pizza crust distractingly into the air, but Peter kept his eyes determinedly on Linderman.

"I came as soon as I could, Mr. Linderman," Peter said, carefully keeping within Thompson's dry, unemotional tones.

"Try this," Linderman said, handing him a piece of still-steaming bread.

Peter took the bread uncertainly, completely unable to pin this man down. Based on everything he'd ever known, he would have said Linderman was the single most evil person on the planet—yet here he was, smiling serenely at him, cooking, offering him _bread_? It didn't fit. Still studying Linderman furiously, he took a bite of the bread, and tried to figure out if the man was sincere. He could _almost_ catch double, triple entendres hovering under his words, but they were so slight you could never grab hold of them—and meanwhile, here he was, charismatic and harmless.

"It's excellent," he told Linderman, buying time by taking another bite.

"Why, thank you," Linderman said, leaning back against the table, arms crossed. "It's the butter that does it, you know. There's this odd sentiment nowadays that margarine out to be used in cooking, but that's a fallacy, I can tell you. If you're willing to trade low calories for taste, you shouldn't be cooking at all. Don't you agree, Peter?"

He felt the lethal two-syllable sound of his name like a small explosion in his chest, rocking him back on his heels and freezing him completely from his heart out to his fingers. _He knew_. How did he know? Wrestling his body away from the shock, he immediately turned to escape this sudden deathtrap, but he stumbled, catching the counter for support. There was something _wrong_ with him, something that was more than surprise and fear. His eyes were blurring and his hands were losing feeling, toxic immobility racing through him like grassfire.

"That's right, I know who you are," Linderman said, looking calmly down at him as he fell to his knees. "And yes, the bread was drugged. It's remarkable how much the taste cooks out, really."

Over Linderman's shoulder, Peter saw the wiry pizza-making chef walk over, shimmer-blurring like a mirage, finally cutting through to reality. Candice. That explained a lot.

Linderman watched dispassionately as Peter crumpled to the white tile floor, changing back to his own body as he blacked out. Admittedly, he had been wanting to meet the boy, but not like this. He looked so much like his father, the long eyelashes and the slender taut frame—in many ways, he was far more like him than Nathan was, he wondered if Peter knew that. _Ah, well_.

"Take him down to the vaults and put him in a cell," he told Candice, turning away.

"Um, no can do, boss," Candice said, nudging Peter with her toe. "We've only got one cell with the capabilities to hold him, and Sylar's in it. Maybe you should have thought of that before you laid him out on your kitchen floor."

"Then put him in the cell with Sylar," Linderman ordered her. "But—do try to see that they don't kill each other, would you?"

"You want him to be roommates with a crazy serial killer?" she asked skeptically. "He'll be dead before he wakes up."


	21. Chapter 21

_Let the tide swallow me whole/  
Like morning light through windows/  
Let that dark water take me home/_

When Peter woke up to an unfamiliar white ceiling, his brain had to do some swift catch-up, playing him a high-speed filmstrip of memories until he finally understood where he was. Las Vegas. Linderman.

Candice.

A colossal headache made itself violently known, splintering his vision into jagged red-and-black bits. He tried to bring his hand up to his head, but it stopped short with a painful jerk and he felt metal cutting into his skin. Confused, he looked up at his hand and found it cuffed at the wrist, chained to the wall behind him. He sat up slowly, careful not to aggravate the pain in his already-screaming head—and found himself skewered by a pair of predatory brown eyes.

He felt his breath catch, his heart stop, and he lost a dizzying black second to the recognition of those eyes and that sharp shark-smile. "_God_!" he said, putting his face in his hands, glad to find that the cuff would let him do so. "Could this day get any worse?"

"You probably shouldn't ask that," Sylar said in that creepy-intense voice that made Peter want to cover his ears. "Not in here."

"Was I _talking_ to you?" Peter snapped, anger overriding fear and bad memories, relieved by the realization that Sylar was also chained at the wrist, to the opposite wall.

"You might as well," Sylar told him. "As far as I'm concerned, it's just a matter of time now. You know they can't hold me forever, and here you are, locked into a room with me." His eyes were unnervingly bright, glossy with barely-contained covetous lust. "You really can't fight it, Peter, it's evolution, survival of the fittest. At least your death will do some good—your abilities will continue on with me."

Peter wasn't thrilled at the prospect of spending the rest of his life (which could be short or long, it was a toss-up at this point—he remembered Mr. Bennet mentioning something about vivisection) trapped in this bad horror movie. "I've never killed anyone before," he told Sylar, locking eyes with the man despite the slight vertigo it gave him, "but considering that you've tried to kill my niece twice and me once, I think there would be a good case for 'self-defense' where you're concerned."

"Is she really your niece?" Sylar mused. "How…_sweet_."

Peter had never seen anything like Sylar in his life. The closest he could think of was a few religious fanatics he'd met, but even they couldn't touch the deep mad intensity of Sylar's conviction. He was on par with the men who blew themselves up in bus stations, who dove their planes into the enemy with a defiant scream and a column of flame—only Sylar had the power to take that flame and keep walking through, to explode and put the pieces back together. There was no stopping him. He was too obsessed, too sure, and too far gone to ever change course.

It would have been bad enough, though Peter, had _he _not been the obsession in question. This rabid nightmare was fifteen feet away from him and there was no Nathan to stand between. It occurred to him that, really, he was the only person who could ever _stop _Sylar (except, it seemed, The Company), what with the whole empath thing. This realization immediately increased his headache, sending shooting pains of responsibility through his temples. He hadn't asked for this.

Okay, so maybe he had.

But it wasn't supposed to belike _this_. He'd wanted a destiny, not a deathmatch.

"It's so close," Sylar breathed, staring at Peter, very hungry, very feral. He was deadly mania, barely curbed, nearly sane, a tenuous hold on the reins. Then, the calm broke like salted ice and he threw himself forward, lunging at Peter until he hit the end of his chain, straining against the bolt in the wall.

Peter backpedaled instinctively, feeling the ridges of the wall bite into his back as he pressed against it, needing more distance between him and this man and his vendetta. What was he doing, thinking about saving the world? There was a very good chance _he_ wouldn't make it out of this place alive.

He heard someone behind him laughing, and suddenly he was reminded that Sylar wasn't the only thing he had to worry about. He turned to the pane of glass that served as their left wall, and there was Candice, standing like she was posing for a centerfold photo shoot, looking delighted with herself.

"Calm down there, cowboy," she said patronizingly to Sylar. "Incidentally, I know how you feel, but we _do_ want him breathing until we decide otherwise." She swept them with acid eyes, lingering just long enough on Peter to make him uncomfortable. "I told them this was a bad idea. Oh well," she said lightly. "There's a pretty lively betting pool as to which of you is going to kill the other first. Do me a favor and don't let anyone win yet?"

She opened the nearly-invisible cell door and clicked across the concrete in her red heels, heading towards Peter, who was doing his level best to ignore her. Between Sylar and Candice, he almost—_almost_—would have picked Sylar. He wished it wasn't a choice he had to consider. She grabbed his hair and pulled his head to the side, stabbing a needle into the hollow between his neck and shoulder. He gripped the edge of his bed and didn't react—he wasn't the fool she was, he knew about actions and consequences—and after a few seconds, she pulled the needle back out studied it under the dim light.

"Thanks, sweetheart," she said. "That's all we need—at least, until our specialists get here. Believe me, you'll know when they arrive." She tousled his hair like an indulgent mother and walked back out, leaving Peter with Sylar and a very deep sense that everything had gone wrong.

---

Both Hana and Claire were trying very hard not to look at the cell phone. Identical apprehensions were floating above their heads like thought bubbles, but they refused to acknowledge them, choosing instead to grit their teeth and hit harder, taking out their anxieties on each other and understanding when the other didn't quite pull their punches. Hana swung at Claire and the girl blocked her head, falling back with little of the determination she'd shown in earlier hours. Claire saw the sun going down behind Hana, the sky healing over dark like a scab and the city shuddering into second life beneath it, flick-flick-flick, neon lights and stars. Trying to swallow down the hysterical anxiety she felt, she missed Hana's leg sweeping in to cut her down and was dumped unceremoniously onto the floor.

She'd already begun scrambling to her feet, preparing for the next attack, when she realized that it wasn't coming. Hana was standing, bronzy skin lit like a statue in the new moonlight, shaking her head. "What?" Claire asked immediately, concern compounding at Hana's grim expression.

"It's no use," Hana said, sitting down on her futon and tossing Claire a water bottle. "We're both making stupid mistakes, we aren't going to do any good practicing like this."

Claire pulled her hair out of its sloppy, uncaring bun and dragged a hand through it. "I know," she said. "I'm sorry, my focus is terrible. I just—can't stop thinking about Peter." There—she'd said it, and now they could both admit that there was a problem.

"He should have been back hours ago," Hana said pensively, staring at the still-silent phone. "He's been gone for nearly a full day, and he hasn't even called us. Something is wrong, Claire."

Claire picked up her phone and flipped it open, telling herself just to dial instead of crying—the last thing she wanted to do was cry in front of this woman, this model of strong, beautiful survival. She wasn't sure Hana had _ever_ cried, and she wasn't going to be the one to go to pieces, she _wasn't_. "I don't care if he said not to call," she told Hana fiercely. "By now he's either safe or in too much trouble for it to matter anymore." The phone rang dully, each monotonous tone like one of Hana's solid right hooks slamming into her. Finally, feeling very much like throwing a six-year-old fit but restraining herself with sixteen-year-old discipline, she tossed the phone back onto the table. "He's not picking up."

"Right," Hana said, steeling herself to make a suggestion that tasted like defeat to her pride. "I think it's time to call your father."


	22. Chapter 22

_Fall was always left in your eyes/  
Just a fleck of yellow light/ _

_Like the sunrise/  
Like the twilight/_

Peter could feel Linderman across the glass before he even looked up—the man had great presence, personal energy almost amounting to a kind of a stage charm, a subtly aggressive projection of self. "Good morning, Peter," he said pleasantly. "I hope you and your roommate have been getting along?"

Peter glanced across the room at Sylar, who was sitting on his bed with his legs crossed, looking meditative and glassy-eyed. "Oh yeah," he said sarcastically. "We're best friends, we've been braiding each other's hair and everything."

"Now that's Nathan talking," Linderman said thoughtfully. "I recognize the anger."

"You don't know anything about my brother."

"I beg to differ, Peter. You of all people should know how interested I am in your family."

"If you mean it's your hobby to tear us to pieces, I could agree with you," Peter said bitterly.

"I assure you that everything I've done has been for the eventual good of us all," Linderman told him in the tone of a teacher imparting a spectacular moral. "I understand that it's difficult to see the whole picture when you're painted into it, but you must trust to the artist's hand, Peter."

Peter laughed humorlessly. "You sound exactly like my father. At least now I know where he got it."

"Ah, your father," Linderman said, sounding regretful. "I am sorry about how that ended—he was very adept at hiding his depression from me."

"You're _sorry_?" Peter said furiously, moving as close to the glass as the chain would let him. "You _destroyed_ my father, latched onto him like a parasite and ate everything he had in him, until there was nothing left for his wife or his children or even _himself_. He died because you destroyed every part of him that was alive—_you_ killed him, and now you're trying to do the same thing to Nathan. I can see what you're doing, Mr. Linderman, and I'm telling you that I'm not going to let it happen."

"Oh, no?" Linderman asked, warmly amused. "And what are you going to do about it, locked in a vault in Las Vegas? One of the reasons I'm glad we got hold of you, Peter, is because you're such a distraction to your brother. Nathan has a very important role to play in the future, and he only seems to be able to make the appropriate decisions if you're not around to talk him out of them. If Nathan is to survive the next five years, he needs to lose his conscience, and quickly."

"World peace through moral depravity?" Peter snorted. "Sounds like a great campaign slogan."

"Someday you'll understand," Linderman said, unruffled. "That is, if you're still around. You're only the second empath we've ever got our hands on, and I admit I'm very curious about how this ability of yours works."

"That makes two of you," Peter said scornfully, nodding to Sylar. "Between you and Mr. Evolution over there, there's not going to be anything left of me—and let me tell you, that will _not _make my brother happy."

Linderman simply smiled that so-sincere smile of fatherly concern. "I brought you boys some food," he said, sliding two plexiglass trays through to their cell with an automated whirr. "Eat something, would you?"

Peter watched him go, feeling distinctly ineffective—it wasn't in his nature to be angry at all, and it was very difficult to sustain fury against someone who didn't seem to mind anything he said. He took the tray of food and stared at it unhappily. He wasn't hungry, and he didn't see any other use for the things they'd given him—he supposed if he got _really_ desperate, he could commit ridiculous, messy suicide with the plastic fork. Or perhaps he could throw the lightweight plastic tray at Sylar if the man bothered him again.

He glanced at Sylar, who seemed busy fiddling with the bolt of his cuff (there wasn't any chance of prying it loose, Peter had tried) and sighed quietly to himself. Maybe not.

---

Peter woke up in the middle of the night with a hand over his mouth and a knee on his chest, driving him so hard into his cot that he could feel the nails through the thin mattress. He snapped instantly from sleep to wakefulness, adrenaline flash-flooding his veins with the first sight to Sylar's eyes, glittering like a cat's out of the dark. He rolled himself off the bed, managing to land squarely on Sylar's ribs despite the fact that it nearly dislocated his wrist to do so.

Peter saw two problems with this scenario: first, that he was chained to the wall, while Sylar appeared to be free, and second, that Sylar was about half a foot taller than him and a lot more angry. Without their respective abilities in the mix, it was a whole different story, and Peter was starting to have serious doubts about the ending. .

Sylar pushed him off and scrambled to his feet, jumping at Peter with a barely-human snarl. Peter, who had learned self-defense—if nothing else—in his training with Claude, punched him solidly in the mouth and sent him stumbling back. He recovered all too quickly and came at Peter again, this time managing to wrap a hand around his throat and slam him back into the wall. Peter blacked out for a split second as the back of his head hit the stone, then came back to silent, struggling life, scrabbling with his free hand to release Sylar's hold on his throat.

Finding that nothing short of a crowbar would make the killer let go, and quickly running out of air, he opted for a different strategy, slamming his elbow into the side of Sylar's head. The man hissed in pain and backed away, but only for a moment—before Peter could stop him, the hand was back around his throat, crushing his windpipe with no handy Claire regeneration to fix it. _This is hopeless_, Peter thought desperately. _I'm half-blind, one-handed, can't move more than two feet in any direction—I am very dead. _

Suddenly, the lights snapped on, searing Peter's vision back to yellow stripes, and there were black-clad men in the cell, dragging them apart seconds before Peter lost consciousness altogether. Abruptly able to breathe again, he fell back against the wall, coughing, as one of the men stabbed a tranquilizer into the thrashing, struggling Sylar. Candice, looking less than spectacular for once in an overlarge sweatshirt and just-rolled-out-of-bed hair, stalked into the cell just as he was going limp, eyes still bright with thwarted menace.

"Dammit, I _told _them," she yelled. "What did I tell them? Why don't they listen to me?" She turned on one of the black-clad commandos, seeming to tower over the muscular man, ten feet added by her withering told-you-so rage. "Get Sylar into another cell, I don't care what Linderman says. And figure out how he got loose!"

The man saluted, military-crisp, and Candice walked over to where Peter had semi-collapsed on his bed. "Are you okay?" she asked, her voice oddly worried. _What the hell? _Peter thought wildly. _She's not _concerned_ about me, is she?_ He looked sharply up at her, but her face only showed skepticism and annoyance, and he gave up the situation for hopelessly crazy.

"Um," he said. "Yeah. I'll be fine."

"Good," she said brusquely, suddenly sharp and businesslike. "Mr. Linderman wouldn't have been happy if you were damaged. Our specialists flew in today, and they want to start the testing tomorrow morning."

Seeing the way he flinched, not quite able to hide his fear, she reached down and patted him on the cheek. "Sleep tight," she said.

---

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thank you SO MUCH, everyone who's been reading and reviewing—your nice words are my fuel to keep writing :)


	23. Chapter 23

_Let the tide swallow me whole/  
Like morning light through windows/  
Let that dark water take me home/_

As a general rule, Linderman didn't take phone calls while he was in his gallery—walking the halls lined with paintings was like literally stepping forward to the future, and he preferred to preserve the sensation while he was planning. So, when his bodyguard popped his head around the divider, phone in one hand and apologetic expression on her face, Linderman knew it _must_ be important.

"Sorry, sir," the woman said deferentially. "It's Nathan Petrelli. You said you wanted to be informed—"

"Yes, yes," Linderman said, striding forward to take the phone. "You did the right thing, Coblentz, thank you." He waited for the woman to fade back into discreet watchfulness, and then held the receiver up to his ear, wondering what it was that his future President wanted. "Nathan?"

The man's clean, metallic tenor came across the line at once, sounding even more sharply biting than usual. "Mr. Linderman, how are you?" It was a perfunctory question, more of a reflex than a sentence, and Linderman swiftly reread it for its real meaning: _I'm angry. I'm on edge. I know you have Peter. _

"I'm fine, Nathan. Things are going well. How about you?" Linderman played along at surface level, carefully angling to bring Nathan out.

"Not so well, I have to admit," Nathan said, readying to breach the reality of his call. "I seem to have misplaced a brother. I don't suppose you've seen him?"

"Your brother is fine, Nathan," Linderman said with near-perfect honesty.

"I think he'd feel a lot better if he was on a plane to New York with me."

"Very possibly," Linderman agreed. "But then, life isn't about doing what makes you feel best, you should know that. A successful life means taking the second option, compromising, learning to live with things that you can't change and getting so good at lying to yourself that you think you're happy."

There was silence on the other end. It wasn't that Nathan didn't understand—Nathan was one of the few he could trust to get the meaning out of his dense sophistries—it was that he understood perfectly, with the crystal clarity of a like mind. He understood, and was trying to decide what to do with the understanding. "I just want my brother back," he said finally.

Linderman sighed, gazing at a Mendez painting he'd grown fond of—Nathan, in the Oval Office, looking unhappy and incredibly strong. "Don't you think this is for the best, Nathan?"

"Not for Peter."

""I'm sorry," Linderman said, in the tone of one who has to break bad news, "but you can't have him. We need him too much, he's the key to this whole thing. He's going to have to stay with us."

There was a very long pause and an odd wooden sound that he thought sounded like Nathan kicking furniture. "Can I see him, then?" Nathan asked.

"Yes," Linderman allowed against his better judgment, figuring Nathan needed a concession. "I'll set you up an appointment."

"Fine," the word had trace venom in it, too deferential to be deadly. "Goodbye, Mr. Linderman."

"Goodbye, Nathan."

---

Peter hadn't realized how _big_ his cell was. Of course, it was no Ritz hotel, but really, it wasn't any smaller than his college dorm room, and a _lot_ cleaner. Now that Sylar had been moved to another cell, he felt free to walk around, and now that they had unchained his wrist, he actually could. He could count the steps across the room (fifteen and a half), or inspect the spot where Sylar had pulled his bolt out of the wall (they had concluded that somehow he'd pried it out using his plastic fork—Peter found that kind of sheer fanatic willpower frankly terrifying). He could lay flat on the floor and try to figure out what the odds were that anyone would try to save him. He didn't get very far with this—he'd never been very good at math, and the whole idea made him feel like the walls were closing in on him, haunted-house style.

In a weird way, he hoped that they wouldn't try. This place was like a military bomb silo for security, and he thought he might go crazy if anyone got hurt trying to free him. They would do better to run and keep running, getting as far away as they could and leaving him. Claire would be all right—Hana would take care of her, and as far as Peter had seen, nothing short of a full-scale army would get past that woman. Nathan—well, maybe Nathan would be better off without him.

He was sitting on his bed, knees pulled up to his chest, thinking about things he didn't want to think about, when the door opened. A dark-haired man with a sharp, thrusting face (Peter guessed that maybe he had Native American blood—that would explain the strong bones) came into his cell, pulling a cart adorned with bright, glittering instruments like Christmas ornaments. Peter felt himself go very cold.

"Hello, Peter," the man said casually, folding surfaces and compartments out of his cart. "My name is Dr. Sorensen, and I'm going to need to perform a few tests on you this morning. I hope we can cooperate with each other to make this as painless as possible."

Peter watched dully as the man set up and rearranged sparkling steel tools, not bothering to answer. When he had been ten years old, he'd broken his leg badly playing soccer, and had needed surgery. He remembered watching the doctor bring out his scalpels and knives, how afraid he'd been, how much he'd wished the anesthesia would kick in, already, and put him in a place where it wouldn't matter. His father hadn't been there (of course) but Nathan had stayed by his side the whole time, reassuring him, holding his hand.

Nathan wasn't here to hold his hand this time.

---

"So he said no?" Mr. Bennet asked as soon as Nathan walked back into the room, instantly able to read the result of the conversation on his face.

"He said no," Nathan confirmed, putting his phone back in the pocket, coming to sit back down in the circle of bleak, determined plotters.

"Well, all right then," Hana said briskly. "We expected that. On to Plan B, yes?"

"Indeed," said Mr. Bennet, squeezing Claire's hand reassuringly. He had hardly let go of her since he and Nathan had arrived that morning, relieved to be reunited once again and worried that she looked so unhealthily ashen, stressing herself to nothing over Peter. If it had been up to him, Mr. Bennet would frankly have left Peter to Linderman—he liked the man well enough, but not enough to merit a full-scale rescue mission. He knew, however, that to say this out loud would be paramount to suicide, between Nathan and Claire and even Hana, who seemed to have developed some sort of mild affection for Peter. It was far better to go with general sentiment, keep Claire happy, and hope he could do some damage to The Company along the way. "As I told you, Mr. Petrelli and myself formulated a rough plan on the plane ride here, and we'd welcome your input, Hana."

He was treading particularly carefully around Hana—she didn't forgive as easily as Claire, and he knew what she could do, had seen her do most of it, and knew better than to get her angry. Hana, in turn, had been coolly polite to him, as if he were a neighbor who had insulted her garden instead of a former colleague who had betrayed her and left her for dead. "Linderman, being the experienced mobster and sneak he is, will certainly expect a rescue attempt of some sort. We agreed that the most likely point to stage such an attempt would be when Nathan goes in to see Peter. Therefore, we can assume that he will see it coming a mile away and take precautions to prevent it."

"That doesn't mean, though, that I won't be making the attempt," Nathan told them. "Since he expects it anyway, I'll be giving it to him, making it far less likely that he'll be looking for an attack anywhere else. Who knows," he said with a grin, "I might even succeed."

"In any case, there will be a second prong of the attack going on simultaneously," Mr. Bennet continued. "I'll be in the lobby with about ten guns, shooting security guards and making a huge, obvious mess and being as loud as I possibly can."

"With tranquilizers," Claire said suddenly.

"What?" Mr. Bennet asked, confused.

"You'll be shooting them with tranquilizers, right?" she repeated, blue eyes reproving.

"I suppose," he agreed reluctantly. "Anyway, you'll be with me, sweetheart. We'll be pretty safe, hiding behind slot machines and such."

"As we said, Linderman is going to expect an attack—he might even be able to anticipate two," Nathan said. "What we're banking on, though, is that while he's paying attention to these two, he won't be watching for a third."

"That's where you come in, Hana," Mr. Bennet told her, watching her straighten and shift into precise attention. "Casino security is notoriously impossible to crack, and the only way we've been able to think to compromise it is directly from the inside. We're going to need you to locate the feed from the Monticello security office, break into the office itself, and figure out how to open the cell doors in the vaults, all while we're distracting Linderman. Nathan will be right at Peter's cell, and should be able to get him out if you can unlock it. Do you think you can do that?"

"I can do it," she told him, calmly confident. "Just one thing: since I am the one who is going to be heading the actual attempt, may I have Claire?"

Mr. Bennet blinked behind his glasses, nonplussed. "Why?" he asked bluntly.

Hana smiled with an emotion he couldn't quite place, glancing across the couch at a very surprised Claire. "Well, I'm going to have to deal with a whole lot of security personnel, and as flattered as I am that you think I can take them all, I'd rather have a little help. Turns out your Claire is a bit of a natural."

Feeling as if he'd somewhat lost touch with the world, Mr. Bennet turned to his daughter. "What do you think, Claire?"

"I want to go with her," Claire said, her voice small but steady.

"Then I guess that's that," Mr. Bennet said helplessly. "When do we want to plan this for?"

"Tomorrow," Claire proposed immediately.

"Tomorrow?" Mr. Bennet asked, thrown.

"She might have a point," Nathan said. "Every day we wait makes it less likely that Peter will be alive to rescue at all."

"Right," Mr. Bennet said, bending to the two pairs of eyes that told him they were literally going out of their minds with worry. "Tomorrow."


	24. Chapter 24

_These rules are made to break/_

_And these walls are built to fall/  
These rules are made to break us all/_

Linderman was not terribly surprised to find Jessica Sanders in his office—the woman was impossibly strong and very resourceful, that was why he'd been interested in her in the first place. He was, however, surprised to see her son by her side, sitting in his desk chair and spinning it around in circles in a convincing imitation of a normal child.

Which, of course, he wasn't—this was another family that he had high hopes for, and he'd invested quite a bit of time ensuring he could manage them. He'd learned early on in this business that there really wasn't such a thing as a single, isolated person—whether their relationships were good or bad, people needed to be manipulated in families, held onto by their closest ties.

"Hello, Niki," he said, just to be safe—he'd learned to tell when she was her dangerous doppelganger (who he infinitely preferred to the weak, prevaricating Niki), but he wasn't sure how much she wanted her son to know. "Hello, Micah. To what do I owe the pleasure of your presence?"

Jessica directed a meaning nod at Micah before answering. "Micah, honey," she said in her faking-Niki voice. "Why don't you go look at that computer in the lobby? I saw you eyeing it on the way in here."

Obediently, but with a second's flash of suspicious spark, Micah hopped off the chair and went out to the reception area, leaving Linderman and Jessica free to talk, adult to adult, killer to killer. "Sorry," Jessica explained. "I'm stuck on babysitting duty. I couldn't get out of it—DL's going to a job interview, and I couldn't think of any reason why I couldn't take Micah today. I mean, what do I tell him, I'm going off to kill someone for a mobster, I can't take our son along?" She snorted in a distinctly indelicate way. "He's suspicious enough already. So what do you think—can you do something with the brat while I'm gone? I shouldn't be more than a few hours."

"Unfortunately, I have a pressing engagement this morning," Linderman told her. "However, I'm sure I could find somewhere to put him—there are plenty of gadgets around that would fascinate him."

"Thanks ever so much," Jessica said sardonically, swinging the door open. She kissed Micah on the top of the head as she passed him, waving goodbye with a faux-Niki smile. "Be good, baby. I'll be back soon."

---

"Good morning, Mr. Linderman," Nathan said, hiding his surprise at seeing the man at the casino entrance, arms folded and apparently waiting for him.

"Good morning, Nathan," Linderman said, falling into step beside him with his bodyguard hovering two paces behind. Nathan gave the guard a swift, skeptical look—the wispily blond, superthin woman didn't look up to guarding anything past a sweater on a sales rack, but he'd certainly been deceived by appearances before. In any case, if she was as fragile as she looked, that made Nathan's job so much easier.

They cut through the casino at a quick walk, twin figures of power and expensive suits, stopped by no one, questioned by no one. They walked a perfectly straight and uncompromising line, and people gave way before him because they saw their eyes slide past them and knew they wouldn't stop. Nathan wondered if Linderman could sense the tension he felt, see the concealed plans hidden under his mask. He doubted it—he was very good at this game.

When he was seventeen and had decided to be a lawyer (it hadn't been much of a decision—that, like everything else, seemed to have been mapped effortlessly for him from the moment he'd been born) his father had made him take an acting class. At the time, he'd grumbled and argued and hadn't understood, but the skills he'd learned there had since been invaluable to him. He'd made such constant and effective use of them, in fact, that when he'd decided to go into politics he'd taken a second class, knowing the even-greater emphasis on appearance he would face. As a result, Nathan could smile and fake with the best of them—the problem was, Linderman _was _the best of them, and Nathan wasn't sure how far he could fool the man.

They left the overcompensating loud glitz of the casino floor for the quieter, stripped economy of the lower levels, the place where the real work got done. They stopped at a large metal door, where they were joined by another, more effective-looking muscular security guard who patted Nathan down with swift, professional efficiency. Nathan wasn't nearly foolish enough to bring a firearm into Company facilities, so he passed the check with no difficulty, and the door was opened with a melodramatic creak to admit them.

Once they were inside the vaults, Linderman led him to one of the doors that lined the hallway, opening it with a six-number code that Nathan instantly tried to memorize, just in case it turned out to be helpful later. They walked through to the cell, and Nathan froze three steps in, stunned motionless at the sight of his brother.

Peter looked like he'd been in some kind of nasty car accident, cuts all up and down his arms, glaring red like a dangerous warning sign against his abnormally pale skin. He looked sick, and in pain, and so nearly dead that Nathan found himself out-of-body overwhelmed by a violent urge to kill someone. Peter's head came up at the motion behind the glass, and he stared, uncomprehending, for several seconds at the sight of Nathan before seeming to accept it as real.

"Nathan!" he said, disbelieving and slightly hoarse, and as he stood up, Nathan could see him limping—obviously, his abilities were being restricted by the cell, but that was just another reason to get him out as soon as possible.

"Hey, Pete," Nathan said gently, stopping the automatic _are you okay? _before it got out—obviously, he was _not_ okay. Instead, he substituted the more neutral, "How are you holding up?"

Peter looked away. "I'm fine."

Behind him, a third guard entered the room, making a harassed beeline for Linderman. "Mr. Linderman, sir, we have a problem."

Nathan allowed himself a small smile, hoping that Peter would see it and interpret it as _hang in there, we're going to get you out._ "What do you mean?" Linderman asked sharply.

"Well, sir, there's a man on the floor with a gun, shooting at security guards. We're not sure what to do about it."

"Describe him," Linderman ordered, calm and focused.

"Average height, brown hair, horn-rimmed glasses."

"Ah," Linderman said, eyes hard with recognition. "Bennet. You have my permission to open fire—this man is very dangerous and should be treated as a maximum threat. Coblentz, go with him, and I want to be informed when he is neutralized."

The model-waiflike blond woman nodded respectful acceptance and followed the guard out of the room. This was exactly what Nathan had been waiting for—before they could turn their attention back to him, he pulled the remaining guard to him and punched him in the jaw. As the man fell back, taken by surprise, Nathan grabbed his gun out of its holster and pointed it at Linderman, bringing the situation to an immediate standstill.

"Sorry, Mr. Linderman," he said coolly, "but I'm going to need you not to move."

---

Mr. Bennet walked briskly through the crowd, fast enough that he looked like he had somewhere to go but not so fast that he appeared to be in a hurry. He carried a duffel bag low at his side, an ordinary athletic-looking thing that no one would every suspect had seven guns inside of it. He found it remarkable, really, that security wasn't tighter on the casino floor—but then, he supposed they had more important things to be guarding.

He dropped back beside an unused roulette table, went to his knees on the chokingly over-designed carpet, and unzipped the bag. Swiftly, quietly, he pulled out two large automatic handguns and began assembling them. _You'll be shooting them with tranquilizers, won't you? _he heard his memory play back to him, pulling up the picture of Claire with her reproving blue eyes. He brushed it aside and shoved the clip into his gun, taking aim at the nearest black-clad security guard. What Claire didn't know, wouldn't hurt her.

--

Hana waited until she heard the screams from the game floor, then nodded to Claire, and they both set off toward the door in front of them. Claire pulled the gun out of the back of her pants and held it low in front of her, watching Hana for her cues. Technically, Claire didn't really know how to use the gun—though, in the times she'd tried it, she'd proven to have a good eye and a remarkably steady hand—but they didn't mean to hurt anyone, only scare them into compliance, and the presence of the gun was all they needed for that.

Hana reached the door first, kicking it open in front of her—a bit dramatic, she had to admit, but at this point it was all about the act. Half a dozen surprised security personnel snapped their heads up to the unexpected intrusion, and, seeing their office invaded by two angry-looking super-femme women with guns, immediately scattered to the back of the room.

"Nobody move!" Hana commanded in her best parade-ground voice. "Nobody move, or I _will_ shoot you!"

The security people, completely terrified, huddled together and put their hands up—she was pleased to discover that the office was staffed by the geeky, technological sort of security personnel, as opposed to the bulky bouncer kind. That made things quite a bit easier.

Claire was already at the bank of televisions on the wall, searching for Peter and Nathan. "Hana," she said suddenly. "Come look at this."

They watched in dismay on the video monitor as a small black-and-white version of the vaults showed them Nathan, quietly being snuck up on by a security guard while he fiddled with Peter's cell door. "Oh _no_," Claire moaned, watching, horrified, as the guard jumped him, pinning his arms behind his back. "We need to figure this out _really_ fast, Hana—he needs help."

"You," Hana snapped, pointing her gun at the nearest security man. "Show me how to open the vault doors!"

"You can't," the man mumbled, looking quite sure he was about to die.

"_Excuse me?"_

"You can't open them. There was a problem in the lobby, and everything went into lockdown. The doors can't be opened."


	25. Chapter 25

_Take what you need while there's time/  
The city will be earth in a short while/  
If I'm not mistaken/  
It's been in flames/  
You and I will escape to the seaside/_

"You can't open them. There was a problem in the lobby, and everything went into lockdown. The doors can't be opened."

Claire slammed her hand against the monitor. "No!" she screamed, somewhat out of control and no longer caring if Hana saw the tears that simply refused to be stopped. "God, Hana, _no_, Peter's down there!"

Hana left off threatening the security personnel—she figured they were terrified enough to behave for a bit—to get to Claire before she deteriorated into hysterics. She put an awkward arm around the girl's shoulders, as much to restrain her as to comfort. "It's okay, Claire, we can figure this out."

"_No, we can't_," Claire said fiercely, throwing her optimism and pity back in her face. "Peter and Nathan are going to _die_, because _we _screwed up, because _I _screwed up." Her mascara was mixing with her tears to make sooty black lines down her cheeks, making her look frighteningly abstract and unreal.

"Hey," said a voice from behind them. "Maybe I can help."

Hana snapped around with her gun up, but she soon found that there was no cause for alarm. A small, defensive-looking curly-haired child was standing a few feet away from them, chin lifted with newly made decision. _Oh God, there was a _kid _in here? _Hana quickly replayed their dramatic break-in to herself, horrified and guilty.

"That's okay, honey," she said quickly, berating herself for not checking the premises better. "Why don't you go find your mom?"

"No, I mean it," the kid said, sounding very competent and level. "I can get the doors open."

---

When the security guard grabbed him, for a moment Nathan thought it was all over (or, at least his part of it—there were three more people he had to bank on, and it was a good thing, too). He grappled with the man for a moment, managing to twist his hands around and shove the stolen gun into its owner's stomach. Without hesitation, without a thought, he squeezed the trigger twice, shooting point-blank into the man, who shuddered violently under the impact of the bullets and went still, dead in seconds.

Unfortunately, this was not the end of his problems. He'd been wondering why Linderman looked so calm, uneasily remembering Mr. Bennet's words about how likely it was that he would have expected an attack. Now, behind him, in the room before he could even get the dead weight of the guard off him, was the possibly the very last person he'd wanted to see—Candice.

"Really, Nathan," Linderman said, sounding cool, disappointed. "You think I don't know you better than all this?"

Candice, laughing quietly at his visible distress, calmly brought her gun up and shot him in the arm. He yelled and dropped his own gun, falling back against the wall as his sleeve soaked through with blood. She grinned, silky, sardonic, and advanced on him until the muzzle of her gun pressed into his chest, directly over his heart.

"That's enough, Candice," Linderman commanded sharply. "Please try to remember that I need him alive."

Suddenly, there was a grating metallic sound, a bell-like ping, and a cry of surprise from Peter as his door popped open, swinging unlocked of its own accord. _Finally!_ Nathan thought, and took advantage of the moment of surprise by kneeing Candice in the ribs, sending her to the ground with another solid kick. Linderman was already on a walkie-talkie, calling for backup as Nathan ran to Peter, grabbing a handful of his brother's shirt and pulling him out of the cell.

"Can you walk?" he asked quickly, sizing up the damage, ignoring the screams of his own arm, still pumping blood and hurting like he'd torn it off.

"Ow," Peter said involuntarily as Nathan put an arm around his shoulders, supporting him. "Um. Yes. Sort of."

They made it all the way out of the room and into the hallway before Candice caught up, grabbing Peter's shoulder and dragging them toward her. Peter stumbled with a throated cry of pain, turning terrified, traumatized, lanternflame-golden-brown eyes on her. She let go of him like she'd been burned, jerking away and skittering back on her heels. Both brothers stared at her in confusion and alarm as they tried to figure out exactly what trick she was pulling, but she continued to back away, flaring with sudden anger.

"Just _go_, all right?" she screamed. "Leave, now, or I'll shoot you both!"

Not understanding but not willing to waste their moment of freak luck, they went, leaving Candice with her gun hanging limply by her side, wondering when she'd become such a fool.

---

Claire was forcing herself not to stare at the kid ('Micah', apparently—she'd never heard the name before, and remembered vaguely from science class that it was some sort of a rock), watching the monitor determinedly instead. To be sure, there was plenty to keep her interested on the screen, what with the dramatic struggles and heartstopping surprise appearances, but she still found herself sneaking sideways glances at the curly-haired, concentrating boy. She wondered why his ability, out of all the incredible things she'd seen, should so fascinate her and freak her out. Possibly it was because he was so small, so very young and hard-eyed, sitting on his knees in the chair with his palm on the console, talking to machines like another child would talk to an imaginary friend.

She let out a long-held breath as Peter and Nathan finally made it out of the vaults and onto the casino floor, watching with lifting spirits as Peter stopped limping, looking healthier with each step. _You're welcome_, she thought at him with a cheerful smile that she hadn't had much use for lately, scanning the rest of the screens quickly.

Her eyes stopped, snagged on an unexpected and very bad sight on the monitor to her left. "Hana," she said, voice rising with panic and hindsight. "I don't think we thought this through very well."

Hana strode over and looked at the screen she was pointing to, putting a hand to her head and swearing violently as she saw what Claire had seen: dozens of other imprisoned specials, discovering that their doors were no longer locked; Sylar, walking down the hallway with a vengeful, strong step. "Lock the doors, Micah!" she said. "Lock everything down, now!"

---

Mr. Bennet was in trouble.

Things had been going remarkably well for him, especially considering that he wasn't supposed to be doing any more than creating a spectacular distraction. Due to some combination of his excellent aim and the guards' disorganized surprise, he'd so far killed about ten guards and wounded a half a dozen more. He'd dropped four of them before they'd even figured out where the bullets were coming from, and he was in such a carefully-planned strategic position—in a corner, blocked by a roulette table and a row of slot machines—that they hadn't been able to get at him without going through a line of well-placed fire.

But that was before _she _showed up. When she'd first walked out onto the floor, he'd barely taken notice of her, blond stick of a woman that she was. However, when she'd shot close enough to him to strike sparks from the nearest machine, he'd begun to focus on her, sending a furious barrage of bullets her way, so close and so accurate they would certainly take her out. Sure enough, they had flown straight for her, coming inches away from riddling her torso with bullet holes, when they had…_bounced. _That was the only word to describe it, the way the bullets had hit some kind of barrier in front of her with a slight blue shimmer, falling away and leaving her completely unharmed.

He knew that Linderman had other specials in his employ—it was one of the things that made The Company so strong. He hadn't known, though, that Linderman had managed to get his hands on someone so very _useful_. A shielder—what he wouldn't have given to have the woman as _his _bodyguard.

She had been pressing steadily in on him for about fifteen minutes, undeterred by anything he threw her way, and he had begun to think that perhaps the game was up. Fortunately, just as he'd taken final refuge behind the table, wondering if hand-to-hand combat would do him any good, he saw Peter and Nathan crossing the room, heading toward him.

His first thought, taking in Peter's battered, bloody appearance, was, _Well, that's just fantastic, he's practically dead anyway_. But as they got closer, he saw Peter straighten, gashes pulling together, and remembered: shielders and shapeshifters were nothing, and Linderman didn't have the most useful special of all—not anymore. Peter, bright kid that he was, picked up on Mr. Bennet's problem immediately, analyzed it, solved it, and threw a shield over the three of them that held like a brick wall against the blond woman's bullets.

"Hi," he said simply as he reached Mr. Bennet, offering him a hand up.

"Thanks," Mr. Bennet said, taking the hand, noticing the dizzy, unfocused look in Nathan's eyes, wondering how much blood the man had lost from the wound in his arm. "Your timing is fantastic, but we need to leave right now."

Exactly on cue, Hana and Claire ran in from a side hallway, confusingly followed by a small, cocoa-skinned child. "Nathan!" Claire gasped when she saw the blood all down his arm, apparently forgetting that she was never going to speak to him again. "That looks terrible!"

"I'm fine," Nathan lied. "Who the hell is the kid?"

"Long story," Hana said, then turned to the child in question. "Micah, it's more dangerous out here than we thought. Why don't you just go back to the security office until it's safe? Thank you for your help, and if anyone asks, we held a gun to your head, okay?"

The boy nodded grim acceptance and headed back down the hall, while the rest of their group gathered themselves for a dash to the door. "We need to hurry," Hana told them over the noise of the gunfire. "Sylar got out when we opened the doors, and I don't know who else. I don't know where he is."

That got them moving—they went for the door, people bouncing off Peter's newly-discovered shielding, guards yelling frantically into their headsets. The blue-shimmering shield seemed perfectly impenetrable, deterring everything and everyone, so Mr. Bennet was understandably startled when he collided with a small, dark-haired woman. Once he got a good look at her, however—golden-tint Mediterranean skin and wham-green eyes, a mouth that was meant for smiling but hadn't been doing much of it lately—it suddenly made sense, and he nearly lost his balance to the surprise.

"_Katie?_" he managed, completely and sincerely flabbergasted for once in his life.

The woman froze at the sound of her name, gave him an excellent impression of a deer, terrified and immobilized by car headlights, then turned and dashed off, losing herself at once in the churning crowd. He restarted his heart, gave a mental shrug, and caught up with the rest of his group outside the casino.

He would deal with dead girls and impossibilities later. For now, they had won, and that was all that mattered.


	26. Chapter 26

"Ow!" Nathan yelled, jerking his arm away from Peter. "Why don't you just cut my arm off with a chainsaw and get it over with!"

Peter pulled the arm back patiently, not taking his eyes off the wound he was cleaning. "Please stay still, sir, I am a registered nurse," he said, deadpan.

"Shut up," Nathan retorted, reassured that Peter was relaxed enough to make jokes—that meant his arm must not be _too_ badly injured.

"Seriously, though, it looks like it's going to be fine," Peter told him, starting to wrap clean white gauze around Nathan's bicep. "It went straight through the muscle, didn't hit any blood vessels or anything. It's going to hurt like crazy for a while, but if you don't mess with it, it'll heal right up."

"What about you, Pete?" Nathan asked. He'd been watching Peter closely ever since they'd gotten back to Hana's apartment, his mind overlaying the image of his brother with cuts across his skin and burn marks at his neck over Peter's every move. He wondered if he would ever be able to look at Peter again without seeing that memory—it wasn't the kind of thing one forgot. "You're okay, right?"

"I'm great," Peter said, carefully not meeting his eyes as he tied the bandage. "I'm Magic Miracle-Gro Boy, remember?"

"That's not what I meant," Nathan persisted, concerned not for the state of Peter's bruises but for the new shadows in his eyes, the jaded, injured slant of his shoulders.

Peter tore off the extra gauze, tossing it to the side. "There you are, good as new," he said brightly. "I am officially done."

"And officially evasive," Nathan said, irritated.

"Never say that having a nurse in the family isn't useful," Peter said, breezing past Nathan's insistent prods. "Who needs a hospital when you've got me?"

Nathan gave him a half-meant smile, barely even trying to make it real. Now that he had Peter back, Nathan was finding it harder and harder to accept the sacrifices he'd made. Choices that had been so straight-line easy now rubbed and vexed, no longer seeming so smart now that he had the consequences to deal with. There was an overhanging miasma of _what have I done? _about his thoughts, and he was increasingly unsure that he'd taken the right path. Sometimes, it got so bad that he wanted to snatch up the phone, call Linderman and beg for the power back, sacrifice Peter, sacrifice everyone and climb over their dead bodies to the Oval Office that was so featured in his dreams of late. He still wasn't sure that he wouldn't.

Through the clear glass porch door, he saw Peter walk out on the deck and hug Claire from behind, surprising her with the little bursts of affection he was so good at. Nathan tried not to admit it, but he felt a little jealous. Peter was a person born with a huge amount of love, all stocked up inside him and ready for deployment. Conversely, he'd also been cursed in his life to have remarkably few people to love: Nathan, his mother, Simone. There were times when Nathan had though he might explode, literally burst all to shrapnel with all the carefully contained, little-used natural wellspring of care and compassion. He used to compensate by being warm and kind to incidental acquaintances, charming complete strangers and making their days.

Now Peter had someone else to love, and in some irrational way it made Nathan feel as if there was less affection available for him, who had so little of love in his life to start with. He was jealous, and it made him spiteful and petty, inclined to explode with as little notice as Krakatoa or Pompeii. He'd been staying away from everybody, Claire especially, so that they might not be harmed by the eventual (inevitable) eruption. She was still so fragile and bendable, barely teenage with no foundations yet, only hormones and tentative relationships. Nathan was convinced now that he shouldn't be one of those relationships—he was so acid-caustic and damaging, nearly lethal to anyone who didn't know how to deal with him. She didn't need that. She had a father already, and he was a thousand times better at it than Nathan could ever be. She had her father and she had Peter—the last thing she needed was him.

He wondered about her, as he watched her on the porch, laughing so that he could hear her even through the glass, acting like a high school girl should for the first time in days. He wondered how she stood it, the deaths and the capsized chaos, the people and places that flew past her like a low-budget backdrop and usually never came back. He wondered what she had done in a former life, to be saddled with this existence of destiny and drama, men trying to kill her and worlds hinging on her. She must have had some terrible karma stocked up somewhere, if you believed in that sort of thing. Nathan didn't.

Nathan heard Mr. Bennet come up behind him—he'd gotten better at that, lately, what with the high-stress, twitch-inducing situations he'd been thrust into on a regular basis. In this house full of former spooks and sharks, he _needed_ the heightened senses, or he would have gone crazy with people popping up from nowhere.

"What do you need, Bennet?" he asked, still watching Peter and Claire tease and laugh and pretend that life was not terrible. Perhaps Mr. Bennet felt jealous, too—he'd always been close to his daughter, and it was clear to anyone that there was nobody that Claire adored and idolized more than Peter. Nathan understood why: he made her feel as if things were normal, as if every new horror was an adventure and that she could always come back to him and he would hug her even if there was blood on her hands. It was a uncle-best friend-father-brother relationship that was rare and pure and probably the only thing keeping them both sane. There would never be a substitute for that.

"We need to talk," Mr. Bennet told him in that special sucked-dry tone he had, the one that said that he simply didn't care about anything and would shoot you in the face without a second thought.

"So talk," Nathan said emotionlessly, determined not to bleed if Mr. Bennet wasn't going to.

"No," Mr. Bennet clarified patiently. "All of us."

"Ah, you mean one of those War Council powwows," Nathan said, wondering if Mr. Bennet could see his sour expression reflected in the glass. "Gotcha."

"Go tell Peter and Claire, and I'll get Hana," Mr. Bennet prompted. "I'll meet you in the living room."

Nathan felt the order like a physical blow, near-unbearable for someone who was used to issuing the commands, and especially for someone who feared they may never issue them again. He told himself that Mr. Bennet hadn't meant it like that—he was simply another like Nathan, used to taking charge in a world full of people who wanted desperately to be told what to do. He went to slide open the back door, then paused, not wanting to break up the only bit of unattacked, unadulterated happiness that Peter and Claire were likely to have for some time. He realized that Mr. Bennet had probably set it up this way on purpose, leaving it to Nathan to be the breaker of their moment of sunlight.

Whether he had or he hadn't, there was nothing for it—Nathan pulled to door open and went out to pull them back to reality.

---

"What do you mean, you lost them?" she asked Linderman, looking very much like she wanted to smile or laugh, but had just enough respect for him to hold it back.

"Jessica," he said with a sigh that had been getting all too frequent use in the last few days. "This is a complicated business that I run. We deal with extremely unstable elements on a regular basis, and there isn't a great deal I can do about that. We have nearly a fifty percent loss rate, even on a good day—there's simply not any predicting what these people will do."

"I know _that,_" Jessica said, thumbing through the glossy eight-by-ten pictures. "I just don't understand how you lost so many of them all at once. Looks like someone pulled an _Ocean's Eleven_ on you."

"I suppose you could say they did," Linderman said tiredly. "Now, as you can see, I'd really prefer most of them back alive, except for the ones I've marked, who are the most dangerous and should be killed on sight."

Jessica's fingers paused their flipping, stopped on a profile halfway through. "Petrelli, huh?" she said interestedly. "Any relation to our favorite Congressional candidate?"

"His brother," Linderman confirmed. "He's the priority, actually. I was in the middle of some rather important testing with him, and he's also a very useful piece of blackmail."

"For Nathan?"

"Yes. I still have hopes that Nathan can be salvaged, despite all this. I could, of course, simply choose another man to push to the top, but I've invested a lot of time and energy in Nathan, and I'd rather not give up on him just yet. He was always so perfect for my purposes—if I'd created him myself, I couldn't have made him better. Besides, I'm not sure any of us have a choice—a very reliable source tells me that Nathan _will_ be in the White House. If that's true, I'd like to be the one putting him there."

"Whatever," Jessica said, not listening and not bothering to hide it. "I'll get your runaways, Mr. Linderman."

"See that you do."

---

"So spill, Bennet," Hana said with her usual painful directness. "What's this about?"

They were gathered in the central room, slightly cramped in the small area, which only made sense considering the apartment was meant for one person. Peter had found that getting this group together in one room was like seating guests at a wedding—Nathan couldn't be next to Claire or Mr. Bennet, Claire couldn't be next to Nathan, Hana couldn't be next to Mr. Bennet, it was all very complicated. Soon they would be needing embossed place-markers.

"Well," Mr. Bennet said slowly, organizing his mental notecards, trying to decide where, exactly, the beginning was. "All of you, except Hana, should remember where this all started—why we went after Linderman in the first place."

"You mean, because he's evil?" Peter asked blankly, completely unable to see Mr. Bennet's point.

"No," Mr. Bennet said patiently. "I mean, the reason we planned to infiltrate his offices—the file."

"Oh, yes," Nathan said, reflective-sardonic. "We _did_ have some kind of a plan, didn't we? Funny how these things turn out."

"While we were in the casino," Mr. Bennet continued. "I had an encounter that I haven't yet told any of you about. I ran into Katie."

There was a vacant silence. "Who?" Claire said finally.

"Katie," Mr. Bennet repeated more loudly. "I mentioned her to you once—she was the empath that Claude and I had previous contact with, the woman whose file we've been trying to find. We believed her to be dead, but obviously, she isn't. When I said I ran into her, I meant it literally—she walked straight through your shield, Peter, right into me."

"Another empath?" Peter gasped, looking as if someone had just told him that unicorns were real. "_Seriously?_"

"No, Peter, he's just joking," Nathan said, annoyed. "Of course, seriously."

"Well—where is she? Did you talk to her? Did you see where she went?" Peter asked, questions tumbling over each other like a clown-car pileup in their haste to get out.

"My guess would be that she's been in Linderman's custody all this time," Hana said astutely. "When we broke you out, there was a lot of…collateral escaping going on. We couldn't stop it all."

"We need to find her," Peter said, getting up as if he meant to dash off that second, making the low-roofed room seem instantly smaller as he stood.

"Be my guest," Mr. Bennet said. "I agree that it's fairly crucial for us to find her, considering that she may be the only one who really knows how to control this empathic ability. However, I've been considering it and I can't come up with any way to do it. If you can think of a way to find her, by all means, find her."

"Fine," said Peter, meeting Mr. Bennet's eyes with a cool, trademark-Petrelli stare. "I will."

---

AUTHOR'S NOTE: 100 reviews, woohoo! Have I told you guys yet that I love you? Because I do—I really do.


	27. Chapter 27

_You are the lighthouse, the seamark/  
The tempests created this tide /  
I'm pulled to the black silver ocean/  
Where the current and the heavens collide/_

Listening to him come in the room, Hana decided that she would have to teach Peter Petrelli how to be sneakier. He'd never had much of anything to hide from, was the problem—he'd grown up loved, privileged, American, and had no sense of blending whatsoever.

That was the problem with America as a whole, in Hana's opinion—where the rest of the world's population spent their lives trying not be noticed, to keep their heads down and keep surviving, Americans came with a built-in, burning desire to be different than anyone else. It was a nation of strong minds and innovators, where every child was taught from their birth that they could do anything, be anyone, change the world if they put their mind to it. That was all very well, in theory—but it was a simple fact that not everyone got to be astronauts when they grew up. Every American had been trained and pushed to be a leader, and there simply wasn't space for fifty thousand leaders, not in a country, not in the world.

Peter, sweet as he was, was a prime example, with all his talk of destiny and 'being special'. Though his recent experiences had made him more cynical and a great deal more fidgety, he didn't seem to have taken away any new survival instincts. Well, she would just have to teach him.

"Hi," he said, sitting down across from her. "What are you doing?"

"Carving," she told him, for she was, busily whittling away at a palm branch she'd found in the yard. She wasn't sure what it was meant to be yet, just a random design to keep her hands busy, an excuse to hold her Bowie knife.

"That's really beautiful," Peter told her, watching the blade move over the soft wood.

"Peter, what do you want?" she asked, not interested in his pointless smalltalk.

He smiled slightly and came to his point, understanding her rebuff and not hurt by it in the least. "I have an idea, and I need your help."

She set the wood and knife down next to her, careful to keep the knife's hilt close and pointed toward her. She very highly doubted Peter was about to attack her, but stranger things had happened, and old habits died hard. "So tell me."

He ran a hand through his hair, which Hana noted was completely ineffective at keeping it out of his face, but rather endearing nonetheless. "Well, as you know, we're trying to find Katie," he began, "and not really having much luck."

"Not really, no," she agreed.

"All right, well, if you were a fugitive who just escaped somewhere after years and years, what would you do?"

"I'd get out," she said instantly. "I'd leave, get as far away as I could."

"Exactly," he said, despite the fact that he hadn't quite made a point yet, definitely hadn't said anything she thought merited an 'exactly'. "You'd get on airplane, right? That's where I need your help."

"Peter, you aren't making any sense whatsoever," she told him patiently.

"If Katie's going to leave Vegas, she's going to do it in the next few days. Now, while I don't think she'd necessarily fly under her own name, I _do _believe that we could still pick her out based on her description. I don't quite have the hang of this wireless thing yet, but between me and you, I'm sure we could get a hold of every flight manifest for every plane leaving Nevada. Then, if we see a description that matches her, we could just go find her at the airport."

Hana leaned forward thoughtfully, hands on her knees. "You know, Peter, that's actually a good idea."

"Ouch," Peter said good-naturedly. "Don't sound so surprised."

"We'd need a very thorough description of her," Hana warned him, but he held up a piece of paper before she'd finished speaking.

"Already got it," he told her, unfolding the paper. "Mr. Bennet gave me everything he remembered. Katharine Ramira, female, twenty-five years old, five feet four inches, dark brown hair, green eyes," he read. "It's all here. He even remembered the last part of her social security number—mind like a steel trap, that guy."

"Yes," Hana said, managing to only sound slightly bitter. "A trap all too likely to snap on you and take your hand off."

"If you say so," Peter said diplomatically, unwilling to get involved in the complex pasts and quiet civil wars he'd been avoiding. "Anyway, so you'll help me?"

Hana snapped her knife closed, putting it back in her pocket. "Sure," she said. "Why not?"

---

Katie liked airports. Admittedly, she liked airports a lot less now that she felt compelled to watch every person who passed her in case they jumped her and stabbed her to death. But intense paranoia notwithstanding, she'd sort of missed airports, with their headlong mad bustle, everyone either waiting or dashing at top speed, trying to see how fast they could run while still holding a full cup of coffee. She was happy to see one, to be in one for the first time in eight years—it felt like normality, the smallest piece of her old life back.

"Hey, Jonathan," she said to the boy sitting beside her. "I don't suppose you want to go check our flight information? I'm having this sneaking feeling that we're sitting in the wrong terminal."

He took his head off his arm and looked sleepily at her, black hair standing up at impossible angles. "For the last time, Katie, we're at the right terminal," he said, sounding very adolescent and annoyed. "And no, I will not check. That screen has to be at least a whole twenty steps away, and I really don't think I would make it."

"Don't be melodramatic," she said absent-mindedly. "I _told _you to go to bed last night, this is your own fault."

"I'm seventeen," he said, face buried back in his sweatshirt. "I don't believe in sleep. And how well do you think I'm going to sleep, anyway, with five thousand people after us who probably want us dead?"

"Do you want to keep it down, there, tiger? Let's try not to broadcast our fugitive status, huh?" she said, wondering once again how she'd managed to make herself responsible for this clever, obnoxious, uncaring kid. She was simply, uncomplicatedly too nice for her own good—_I'm one of those idiots that you read about in the newspaper,_ she thought_, who jump into the freezing water to save someone who's drowning and then die of pneumonia themselves. _Not a terribly good trait for someone on the run, but then, she never could have left him in that place—she would have hated herself for the rest of her life.

She let her eyes slide over the crowd, trying with only marginal success to relax. _Stop overanalyzing_, she chided herself. _I'm sure there's nobody in this airport who's looking for you_.

A tallish, attractive brown-haired man sat down in the seat across from her, meeting her eyes with an open, un-airport-like directness that immediately set off warning bells through her hypertense system. "Hi, Katie," he said. "I've been looking for you."

She reacted with the reflexes of a hunted animal, jumping out of her chair, but before she could run, his hand lashed out and grabbed her wrist. "Hey, whoa! I'm not trying to hurt you!"

"Jonathan!" she yelled. "Jonathan, go, get out of here!"

But he was already scrambling to his feet behind her, sparks leaping from his fists, and Peter was thinking o_h dear. This is not going well. _Before things could get truly out of hand, he snatched for the first ability he could think of, relieved to see his surroundings shudder to a halt, flash-frozen.

"What—" she gasped. "_Who are you?"_

"Calm down," he said soothingly, releasing her wrist and backing away placatingly. "I just stopped time for a minute so we could talk."

"I don't want to talk," she hissed, trying to figure out a way to escape and bring the time-stopped Jonathan with her.

"I know what you're thinking," he said quickly. "You think I'm from The Company, but I'm not. My name is Peter Petrelli, and I—well, I'm just like you."

"What do you mean?" she asked warily.

"I'm an empath, for one thing," he explained. "But what I mean is that I escaped from Linderman yesterday, at the Monticello, just like you. All those attacks, the breakout, the whole thing—that was to get me out. I was right in there with you."

"Prove it," she said, crossing her arms.

"Oh—um, okay," he said, caught off-guard—it wasn't often that he had to explain himself to people. "That burn on your neck? That's from an electrode, right? Dr. Sorensen, creepy hawk-faced guy, specializes in empaths?"

She relented a little, bringing a reflexive hand to her neck. "How did you find me?" she wanted to know.

"Wow—um, that's a long story," he said helplessly.

"Apparently, we've got as long as we need," she said, waving a hand at their surroundings, looking like a perfect still-life, _Airport in the Evening_.

"The short answer is, Mr. Bennet. He told me about you and I've been looking for you ever since, because I thought you might help me learn how to control my abilities."

"Bennet?" she said, surprised. She'd always liked the man. Cold as he pretended to be, she'd felt that there was a central core of good in him, Darth Vader-style. Then again, she thought that about everyone.

"Come here," he said suddenly. "Let me fix that burn."

Confused, hesitant, she moved forward until he was close enough to reach out and take her hands. She felt herself reacting empathically, subtle changes and shifts, and she felt her burns and bruises disappearing, the pain fading without scar. "Hey," she said. "Thank you!"

She looked up into his light cinnamon-brown eyes, and suddenly they both became aware of how very close they were standing, and all the places they were touching. Something strong and insistent grabbed them both, pulling them toward each other with black-hole crushing force. Instantly, they both rebelled against it, falling back into defensive postures, leaning away and bracing themselves against the floor. It was like trying to keep their feet against a tidal wave, stealing their breath and doing its best to drag them into compliance. They pulled away from each other with some effort, both acting with little success as if nothing had happened.

"So, what do you think?" he asked, carefully not looking at her. "Do you want to come back with me? We've got five people all together, we could probably help protect you—strength in numbers, right?"

"What about him?" Katie asked, nodding to Jonathan, paused halfway to attacking Peter, sparks frozen like Christmas tinsel in his open palms. "If I go, he goes."

"Who is he?"

"Jonathan Madison—another refugee, manipulates electrical currents, as you can probably tell. I picked him up on the way out of the vaults."

"Fine," Peter agreed immediately. "Bring him. The more, the merrier."

"So we're good?"

"We're good," Peter confirmed.

There was a pause. "Right," Katie said. "Well, then, maybe you'd better start time again, yeah?"

"Oh yeah," Peter said sheepishly. "Get ready to catch the kid—I don't want to be electrocuted."

"Absolutely," Katie agreed.

A beat, and then everything jump-started back to life. As promised, Katie grabbed Jonathan's arm as soon as she saw him start moving, stopping him mid-stride. "Jonathan! Hey, Jonathan, cool it, everything's okay now!"

He looked at her like she'd just proposed they skip the flight and fly off on a magic carpet instead. "_What? _Are you crazy?"

Katie threw a glance at Peter, happy to have someone to share Jonathan with, his hormones and questions and attitudes. "_You_ explain."


	28. Chapter 28

_Used to dream until I stopped writing fiction/  
All is right, well, that's not true/  
Maybe it ended when I ended competition/  
Because I'd always lose/_

As thrilled as he was that Peter had found a way to potentially not blow up New York City, Nathan was jealous again. The instant Katie came in, he saw attraction between them, like a visible cord, like a chain that everyone else was aware of but them. However, he also knew that he really didn't have anything to worry about yet—there would be nothing happening for a _very _long time. Considering that he'd almost literally killed his girlfriend barely two weeks ago, his brother was anything but ready for a new relationship. Katie Ramira would have to wait.

That didn't stop him, though, from carrying her away at the first possible moment, talking her ear off, delighted at having pinned down this kinder, more attractive version of Claude. This effectively left the rest of them alone with the other one, the teenage boy with black hair and an off-center smile that he hoped his own sons never grew into. Even with his new resolution to stay out of Claire's life, he found latent fatherly instincts prickling at the look the kid had given her, appraising her as if she'd been an antique dresser and apparently pleased with what he saw. It had been enough to send both of Claire's fathers into identical defensive postures before he even spoke a word, though Claire herself didn't seem to notice at all.

There was an intense, compounded awkwardness threaded through the room, the inelegance of a situation in which people were once again thrown together without notice or consent. Hana, the only one of them apparently immune to the discomfort, was the first to speak. "Jonathan, right?" she said. "I'm Hana. Welcome to my apartment, I apologize for the lack of space—it's really very comfortable for one person, but not so much for seven."

He didn't answer, only stuck his hands in his pocket and continued his examination of the room. "Do you have anyone you need to get in contact with?" Mr. Bennet asked helpfully. "Family?"

"Nope," Jonathan said, clearly prepared to communicate in monosyllables.

"No, you don't need to contact your family, or no, you don't have a family?" Nathan said, slightly bothered, as he always seemed to become when he dealt with teenagers.

"No, I don't have a family," Jonathan said, looking straight at him, irritated with a hint of sarcasm.

"You don't have a family?" Mr. Bennet asked flatly.

"Nope."

"I find that biologically difficult to believe."

"And I really don't care."

Mr. Bennet raised his eyebrows, blinked, and reconsidered ever letting Claire get married. He supposed he'd been lucky with his own child-raising experience: Claire had always been close to him, always sweet and understanding. Of course, she presented other problems, in the form of dangerous genetic mutations and such, but she'd never been much of a parenting challenge. Perhaps it was a boy thing. "Right," he said, feeling his patience straining dangerously. "Nathan, why don't you show me those articles you were talking about earlier?"

As they left the room, Claire looked up for the first time and became violently aware of Jonathan's gaze on her, steady and entirely unapologetic. His woodsmoke-gray eyes made her suddenly conscious of the overlarge, unflattering band t-shirt she wore, the unbrushed state of her hair, the rips in the knees of her favorite jeans. She turned away abruptly, walking out on the balcony to escape the lacerating stare. This was her favorite place in Hana's apartment, anyway, out above the alleys and burned-out neon signs, the kind of cutaway view of Sin City that no one ever put in travel brochures.

Her escape attempt was unsuccessful—within seconds, she heard footsteps on the deck, and then Jonathan was leaning on the railing beside her. "The Ramones, huh?" he said, nodding at her shirt.

"Yeah," she said, pulling the sleeves nervously down over her hands, unsure of what he wanted.

"Good band. Ever heard the acoustic version of 'California Sun'?"

"No," she admitted. "It's not even my shirt. I mean, I do like them, but the shirt belongs to my friend Zach. I was supposed to be borrowing it, but I don't know if he'll ever get it back now."

"Uh-huh," he said inscrutably. "Boyfriend?"

"No," she said, thrown by his bluntness and suddenly missing Zach very much, with his unwavering loyalty and lovable, geeky bouts of shyness. He knew everything about her, always knew when to hug her, and _never_ made her uncomfortable.

"Good," he said, and before she could respond, he straightened and walked away, gone just as his remark was starting to hit her. She struggled internally for a moment, trying to decide whether not to be offended at his audacity, and finally settled on mild annoyance. She was flattered—he _was_ attractive, in a James Dean sort of way—but he reminded her of Brody, which was a massive turn-off.

As if she didn't have enough problems already.

---

"'Five Die in Radiation Accident'," Mr. Bennet read from the computer screen. "Interesting. This is from _The New York Times_?"

"Yes," Nathan confirmed, clicking into another article, plastered with pictures of melting and crisped death. "So what do you think? Is it our exploding man?"

"I'd say it's pretty likely," Mr. Bennet mused. "I admit I'm surprised to see Ted in New York, but it certainly adds a whole new element to the apocalypse notion."

"You mean, that it might not be Peter?" Nathan asked. "As much as I don't want to see him blow himself to bits, I'm not sure how that helps us—whoever it is that goes nuclear, we've still got Hiroshima on our hands."

"You think we should try to stop him?"

"I think it would be in all of our best interests. I've got a lot of money tied up in real estate in that city."

"You know that if we all go racing up there, we run the risk of Peter meeting up with Ted and rendering the whole point moot?"

"Well, fine," Nathan said exasperatedly. "What do _you _suggest?"

Mr. Bennet stared at the laptop screen, the soft electronic glow from the monitor reflecting against his glasses, obscuring his eyes. "I don't know."

Suddenly, the lights went off, throwing them into uncompromising pitch blackness, and they heard a thump and a muffled yell from the other room. There was a split second of dark, and then the lights flicked back on, then on and off again like a strobe light, fast enough to send an epileptic into seizure. As soon as it stopped, and they trusted themselves to move without breaking bones, Nathan and Mr. Bennet dashed into the living room, prepared for anything and especially what they found.

Jessica Sanders was standing at the edge of the room, the focal point of a half-circle of frozen onlookers, with a pleased, unnervingly malicious smile and a gun to Jonathan's head. Mr. Bennet's first reaction was _so what, let her kill the kid, I can't stand him_, but he had the grace to be ashamed of the thought, and squashed it dead.

"_Niki?" _ Beside, Nathan had turned an extremely unhealthy color and was looking as if he might need resuscitation if he didn't take a breath soon.

"Hey there, lover," the woman said with a grin that didn't quite fit her heart-shaped face. "Niki's not around right now, but you're close. I'll tell her you called, though, I think she really likes you."

Peter had a hand on Katie's arm, who looked like she wanted to leap for Jessica and tear her throat out, like a lioness or a mother. He was whispering something to her, very fast and just quiet enough that Mr. Bennet couldn't hear them, obviously slapdash-suturing together some sort of a plan. He hoped they realized that, with the gunmetal pressed right up against the base of Jonathan's skull, there wasn't anything they could do that would be faster than her pulling the trigger.

They didn't seem to understand the instant futility of such plans, and neither did Jonathan—sparks began building like a localized lightning storm in his hand, snapping loudly enough to catch Jessica's attention at once.

She shook him by the hold she had on the back of his collar, brisk and reprimanding. "Cool it there, cowboy," she said, pushing the gun harder into his neck. "And enough with the strobe light thing, I don't want to have to blow your brains out. Speaking of which," she looked up, making eye contact with each of the fugitives. "You're all coming with me. Now."


	29. Chapter 29

_Puppets on strings/  
All dance and sing/   
And flap their wings/  
Trumpets play sick lullabies/_

Jonathan needed to take a walk. He needed to get out into the air, away from these people he'd made enemies of simply by saying the first thing that came to his mind. He slipped out of the door with the silence and pantheric perfection of a person who did a lot of sneaking. He broke loose of his own quiet and vented his feelings once he was out of the apartment, jumping down the rust-eaten stairs two and three at a time with satisfying loud clangs. He walked away from the complex and toward the lights of the Strip, automatically drawn to them, moth-to-flame. He wanted to take the city in his hands and drain it dry of its bright neon life, suck it of all its electricity until there was light coming out of his eyes in beams and out of the top of his head. He wondered if he could; he wondered how much he could hold until he simply broke apart, cells and volts and nothingness. Part of him wanted to try it.

The rest of him, more firmly grounded in reality, pulled out his cell phone to make a call. Not family—he hadn't lied when Nathan asked where his family was. He didn't know them and never had, so for all practical purposes, he _didn't _have a family. This call was to someone else, and definitely not someone they'd want him contacting.

The phone rang only once before she picked up, always quick to the draw. "Yeah?" she answered, voice impatient, slicing across the airwaves between them.

"Hi, Jessica," he said.

"Hi, Jon," she replied, voice immediately changing to a delighted purr. She actually liked him, so far as the emotion went with her—she'd been known to smile at him and even tousle his hair affectionately. He knew, however, that her happiness had less to do with him and more with the fact that he was about to make her job a whole lot easier. "What have you got for me?"

"Linderman said to check in with you as soon as she'd settled," Jonathan told her, walking slower along the dusk-soaked alley, examining the sprawling graffiti brick-by-brick. "Well, she's settled, and I think you're going to be just thrilled when I tell you where. In fact, you are going to be so impressed with me that you're going to want to buy me a Coke."

"So tell me," she said.

"Promise first," he insisted, holding the bombshell over her head. "Promise you'll buy me a Coke."

"I'll tell you what," she said, dangerous-slow. "I'll buy you a Coke and I'll beat you to death with it. How does that sound?"

"Not so good. I'm getting a feeling that there are some latent violent tendencies locked up in that pretty blond head of yours."

"_Jonathan_," she growled, as in, _you've got three seconds to tell me what I want to know, or else you're of no use to me and you're as good as dead. _

"Fine, fine," he relented, giving in to her as always when she became one hundred percent Jessica, ruthless and not to be messed with. "Katie and I met up with some other specials, and I mean a _lot_ of them. Hana Gitelman, Claire Bennet, Nathan Petrelli, Peter Petrelli, and one non-special that I'm sure Mr. Linderman would like to get his hands on—Mr. Bennet."

"Jonathan, you've just made my day," she said, and he could hear her getting up, ready to hunt them to the ground. "Where are you?"

"Just south of the business district. Here, I'll send you the coordinates with my phone."

"Practically there already. You know, I may buy you that Coke after all."

"Stop it," he deadpanned, kicking an empty beer bottle down the alley, watching it skitter off the walls and break into razored amber shards, "you're making me blush."

"So how do we want to do this? You want to help bring them in?"

"Only passively, please. I still need to be in with them if you screw up, you know."

"I don't screw up," she snapped

"Whatever you say," he grinned, pleased at having successfully annoyed someone as elemental and emotionless at Jessica. "How about this: I'll go stand out on the balcony with a giant target sign painted on my forehead, and you can climb up and grab me. Some of them don't like me very much—"

"I can't imagine why."

"—but they are the good guys, after all," he continued, ignoring her comment. "If you hold a gun to my head and yell a lot, they'll do what you want."

"Sounds like a plan," she said. "I'll be there in ten minutes, tops."

"Just don't get carried away, all right? I'll play hostage without your help, so don't be pushing me around."

"I'm not making any promises," she said breezily, and hung up the phone.

---

"You're all coming with me. Now."

"_Stop it_, Katie, you're going to get him killed," Peter hissed, tightening his grip on her arm. "We can figure this out." He felt her muscles spasming under his hand, shaking with the effort of not tackling Jessica on the spot.

"Can you stop time again?" she whispered furiously. "If you can, do it _now_, Peter."

"I don't know," he admitted, dragging her back as she started to move forward again. "It's too unpredictable, I can't risk it."

"What about shielding?"

"I tried already, I can't get the shield between the gun and his neck, she's got it pressed too tight. Do you think she'd notice if I went invisible?"

"Not if someone distracts her," Katie said grimly, and without moving, without any warning whatsoever, she shut off the lights, throwing them into seamless darkness. She heard scuffling from the front of the room, and the sound of a blow.

"I told you to quit messing with the lights!" Jessica said furiously.

"Ow!" Jonathan complained, apparently not losing his obnoxiousness even in life-threatening situations. "Hey, ow, I didn't do anything!"

_Whoops_, Katie thought guiltily, and switched the electricity back on. Peter was gone, and she quickly stepped back, moving to fill the space where he'd been. Suddenly, Jonathan jerked sideways out of Jessica's grip, pulled violently away by unseen hands. As Jessica swung the gun around to him, Peter came visible again, throwing a blue-spark shield around both of them just in time to deflect the line of bullets that Jessica sent at him and Jonathan. Everyone else dropped at once, used to the sound of gunfire and reacting with the instincts of long practice, forming a makeshift barricade of worn leather couches.

"Katie!" Peter yelled, shoving Jonathan to his hands and knees. "Katie, hold the shield, I'm losing it!"

In her mind, Katie complied immediately, reaching out and shoring up his flickering protections with heroic strength. Her body was a different story—her ears began roaring like she held seashells over them, blocking out Peter's calls for help and overrunning them. Her vision tunneled to nothing, hazing out the situation and the responsibility to act, and she stared at her hands, dizzy and wondering why she was just standing there, doing nothing.

"_Katie!" _he yelled again, barely managing to block out Jessica's latest barrage of perfectly-aimed fire. "Come on, help me out here!"

She heard his voice like a tinny, two-bit echo, filtered through the molasses lockdown of her senses. She fell to her knees, collapsing like a deck of cards under the pressure she could never take and couldn't stand after being so alone for eight years, with nothing but white walls and needles and her own spun-sugar fragile self. "I CAN'T," she screamed back to him, forcing her voice through the gummy panic wrapping her like spiderweb. "I _CAN'T_!"

He had no time to worry about her—his shield gave, fizzling into nothing and letting Jessica's bullets through to hit him in the leg and stomach, driving him to the floor with a cry of pain.

"_Peter!"_ Claire screamed, about to go after him, coming out from behind the couch and ready to run into a rain of deadly projectiles that perhaps even she could not survive. Jonathan grabbed her wrist and jerked her back behind the furniture, nearly dislocating her shoulder, wrapping an arm around her waist to stop her. _That crazy bitch_, he thought furiously, watching Jessica throw her empty clip aside and reload. _She's going to kill them all!_

"Get off!" Claire spat, struggling to get free of him. "Get _off_, don't _touch _me!"

"Do you want to get yourself killed, you stupid girl?" He hung grimly onto her, wincing as her fingernails cut half-moons into his arm. "He can take care of himself!"

Peter had already crawled behind their barricade, bullets falling to the hardwood as his body healed them out. Jessica went after him, blazing down at him from her six feet of blond menace, and was abruptly met by return fire—Hana had managed to get to her emergency handgun, strapped under the coffee table and ready for just such an event. As the bullets came for her, she twisted her body sickeningly, bonelessly, like a cat, wrenching out of the line of fire. She got herself out of the way with near-perfect success—one bullet bit into her shoulder, and she dropped the gun with a wildcat scream-snarl.

Jonathan saw her face change, breaking down to soft eyes and horrified hands coming up to her mouth, trauma-forced into her alter ego. _Oh great_, he thought. _Well, that's it, then_. There was only one problem with Jessica—she herself was invaluable, cold as frostbite and as efficiently emotionless as a robot. Unfortunately, she was bound to her other personality, a weak, vacillating woman named Niki that Jonathan very often wanted to slap. Whatever Jessica did, she couldn't quite get rid of Niki, and there was the rub—she often popped up at the most inconvenient of times.

"Oh God," Niki said, looking as if she wanted to cry. "God, what have I done?"

Jonathan watched Hana's glittering hard, military eyes and her gun come over the top of the couch, and faced a swift decision whether to release Claire and try to save Niki, or to keep his cover and let her die. The choice was made for him before he could move—Nathan hit Hana from the side, grabbing her wrist and sending her shot wild.

"Don't!" he protested. "Can't you see it isn't her anymore?"

Jonathan had only a moment to be impressed at the man's powers of observation before Niki ended the scene, dashing out the door before she could be shot at again, splattering the floor with blood from her shoulder. Jonathan let Claire pry his arm away (reluctantly—she was very pretty, and he wasn't above copping an opportunistic feel—he _was_ seventeen, after all) and she immediately whirled and slapped him with enough force to leave a red mark spreading across his cheek.

"Don't you _ever_ touch me without my permission again," she told him, blistering with female fury.

"All right," he agreed. "When do you think that will be?"

She glared at him and fled to Peter, who was fine but shaken with the aftereffects of wounds that should have rendered him quite dead. He let her go—he himself was worried about Katie, who was still kneeling on the floor, looking like she was going to go into the fetal position any second, never strong under pressure, so much worse, nerves thinner since her captivity.

"Okay, then," Nathan said. "I estimate we've got about half an hour before the police show up, what do we plan to do?"

"I think our decision has been made for us," Mr. Bennet told him, surveying the damage with the practiced eye of one who has seen a lot of damage. "Linderman knows where we are, and every second we're in his city, we're likely to be caught. The dangers of Las Vegas now significantly outweigh the benefits."

"So we're leaving?" Hana asked, thrusting the gun through one of her belt loops.

"We're leaving."

---

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hey, hope you guys didn't have trouble getting this chapter! Some people couldn't see it earlier, so just tell me if there are issues. Sorry about that, don't know what happened, and thanks again for reading and reviewing!


	30. Chapter 30

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I haven't a blessed clue what's going on with the site not letting you guys access my updates. If anyone knows why in the heck my chapters aren't showing up, please tell me! I need help! Thank you for your patience!

_You perceive all of these things/  
I'd never have known/  
Love, will you turn off the lights?/  
Cause we're already home/_

"You're not seriously thinking about taking Peter to New York, are you?"

"You know what, I am," Nathan said, somewhat defiantly, bothered that he felt he had to defend himself to Mr. Bennet. "It's his home. Where else would you suggest?"

"How about someplace he's not going to explode? That would only seem sensible."

"Do you remember what happened _last_ time we let him go off on his own?" Nathan said, not paying much attention to the electronic ticket-buying system he had on the phone. "Because I do. Despite the fact that the rest of you seem content to play Witness Protection forever, I actually have an election to win and a state to run. I need to be in New York yesterday, and if you think I'm letting Peter out of my sight, you're clearly crazier than even _I_ suspected."

"I'm not the one playing chicken with an H-bomb," Mr. Bennet said coolly. "You simply cannot guarantee that he won't run into Ted, and my saying 'I told you so' isn't going to do us much good after the fact."

"So I'll keep him in the house," Nathan shrugged. "Lock him up, if I have to. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life dancing around this thing—obviously, it's time we do something about it, and Peter may be the only one who can."

"Fine," Mr. Bennet said, mashing the words through gritted teeth. "Get tickets for Claire and I." At Nathan's raised eyebrow, he turned away, walking through the disaster-area clutter of blood and furniture. "If you can't beat you I might as well join you. They can make a big communal grave for us all after you get us killed."

"What about you, Hana?" Nathan asked, punching numbers into his phone. "Want me to buy you a ticket?"

"No," Hana said in a clear, carrying tone, not looking up from cleaning her gun.

Nathan did a small double-take, dropping the phone and then catching it neatly with the other hand. "No?"

"My job is to take down Linderman," she informed them. "Linderman is in Las Vegas. I'm not leaving."

"Your apartment's kind of trashed," Nathan observed helpfully.

"I'll get another one."

"You'll be killed."

She cocked her gun loudly and stared up at him, cherrywood eyes glassy with patient danger. "No I won't."

---

Peter waited until Katie got up before he went to her, unsure what to say to a woman who was kneeling silently on the floor, looking like a too-pale carved statue of blank stillness. He watched her, making sure she didn't go into shock, or keel over dead like a terrified rabbit, but he didn't move toward her until she'd gotten to her feet, slightly unsteady, pupils dilated.

He came up slowly up behind her, nonthreatening, and handed her a glass of water (the cup was broken, jagged into glass teeth on one side, but he figured if she cut herself she would heal up anyway). She took it with an uneven smile, holding it in both small hands and drinking carefully out of the smooth side, steadily draining the cup until it was nearly empty.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, swishing the water around in the bottom of the glass with a slow, rhythmic turn of her hand.

"It's okay," he said, encompassing everything she could possibly be apologizing for in a blanket forgiveness, free with his amnesty.

"I should have told you before," she said. "Under pressure, I pretty much suck. It was bad enough before, and now after the whole Linderman thing…I don't know. You can't really count on me, not ever. I freeze up, or get hysterical…it gets ugly. "

"And I'm going to blow up New York City," Peter cut in. "So what? What does that have to do with anything? If you think you're getting out of this by saying you're useless, you're wrong, because we already know better."

She drained the last of the water and handed the cup back to him, looking around the rest of the room for a change of subject. "Where's Jonathan?" she asked.

"I think I saw him leave a minute ago—guess he wanted some air, after the whole near-death experience thing. I tell you, seventeen years old," he kicked a fallen lamp to the side, and it clinked sadly, hollow and broken, "he shouldn't have to deal with any of this."

"And we should?" she asked, half joking, half unfortunately serious.

"Good point," he said, catching her meaning on both levels. "Well, I'd better go find him, we'll be leaving soon."

He walked slowly down the stairs, feeling each step shudder under him, maliciously threatening to break, and found Jonathan ten feet away, snapping a cell phone shut as he approached.

"Hi," he said, coming to stand a respectful distance away from Jonathan—he wasn't sure how close he could get without the kid charging. He'd been a teenager, he knew about the madness and hormones and the sudden killing desire to be new and separate on your own two feet. He had a lot of patience for it all, given the hurricane violence of his own adolescent years. He knew that a vast majority of people came through it all right—he had, or very nearly. "Who are you calling?" he asked in the most neutral tone he had.

"No one," Jonathan lied unconcernedly—as long as Peter knew it was a lie and he knew that Peter knew it was, they could pretend that it was nothing.

"Where'd you get the phone?"

"I stole it." This had a bit of challenge in it, an underscored _what are you going to do about it?_

"Huh," Peter said noncommittally, deliberately foiling his confrontation. "Well, we're leaving in a few minutes, so you should probably come in."

Jonathan didn't answer, only flipped the phone deftly over his hand, showing off for Peter and the brick walls. Peter had seen better tricks, and didn't want to overstay his welcome, so he turned to go.

"Hey, can I ask you a question?" Jonathan's words bounced off his back, and he turned around again, pleased that Jonathan had actually initiated conversation instead of batting his questions back at him like it was a game of badminton.

"Shoot," he said, keeping his voice low-key and his hands where Jonathan could see them.

"Why'd you save me?"

"Because you're the most angry, deliberately obnoxious person I've ever met and there's got to be a reason for it," he said, wondering belatedly if he should have lied a little, but too far in to pull back without hurting someone anyway. "I'm curious about you, and I don't think the autopsy table is going to tell me what I want to know. Why? Do you think I shouldn't have?"

"You could have died."

Peter shrugged, shoulders moving under his thin cotton shirt, apathy in action. "Something's got to kill you, right? There are lamer ways to die."

Jonathan chose to implement another one of his rebellious silences, his eyes guttering with fought traces of light. "Come inside," Peter said, tired of being sounding board and camp counselor for every person who wandered across his life. "We're about to leave."

"Any chance you'll tell me where we're going?" Jonathan asked.

"New York City," Peter told him. "Don't worry, you'll fit right in."

---

"Is it in this room?"

Peter shifted on his feet, grinning and carefully not looking at his chosen object. "Yes it is."

"Is it on someone?" Claire looked down the line stretching between her and the security checkpoint, studying the annoyed, impatient people as they put backpacks through scanners and walked through metal detectors.

Peter chewed on his lip, deciding. "I guess you could say that."

"Is it blue?"

"Definitely not."

"Is it orange?"

"Why, yes. Yes it is."

"Is it that lady's hair?" Claire asked triumphantly, loud enough that the woman in question turned around, glaring at them from her formidable, chicken-skeleton height.

"Shh!" Peter said, putting his hand over Claire's mouth and dragging her behind Nathan. "Yes, it is, but not so loud. You win."

She appreciated Peter distracting her—she had been able to tell instantly what he was doing, but that didn't stop it working wonders for her nerves. Everyone in their group was various levels of twitchy, with the raw overdeveloped reflexes of people who are often attacked—Vietnam veterans and Presidents and victims of domestic abuse—only she had the benefit of Peter to get her mind off it all. Televisions glowed insistently in the background, playing news that none of them were interested in, and only made them twitchier with their noise. Somewhere along the line, they'd all become prey, hunters turned to hunted as the list of their predators grew too long to cope with. How, she wondered, were they supposed to go about saving a world that so clearly wanted them dead? Had this world no sense of self-preservation at all?

Her dad slipped into line beside her and took her hand in his. She looked up at him, his profile cutting against the wash-out lights from the ceiling, and she felt immediately better. Here was the one hunter that would never sheathe his claws, never drop his gun. When she'd first learned of the other side of her dad, the ugly ruthlessness he'd hidden from her, she'd been frightened and horrified, entitled suburban sensibilities shocked. Now that she'd seen more of life and small minds, she found that side of him reassuring. Her father would do what was necessary, always and without hesitation. How many daughters could say that?

A gray-clad airport security man tapped Peter on the shoulder, eyes shaded to invisibility beneath his unflattering cap. "Sir, could you step this way, please?"

Peter shot a troubled look at Nathan, complying with too-obvious reluctance. "Um, sure," he said uneasily, following the guard out of line.

"This doesn't look good," Nathan said tensely, drumming his fingers against the side of his leg. He glanced back at everyone else, and found Claire standing stunned, looking as if something very heavy had just fallen on her head, staring at the television set that was blinking and talking and breaking new, terrible news. The anchor made overdone surprised faces and flirted with her co-anchor while the words crawled across their chests in yellow letters: SUPERPOWERED FUGITIVES AT LARGE IN LAS VEGAS.

"Hey guys," Claire said, sounding dazed enough to fall or faint. "We're on TV."


	31. Chapter 31

_We all are connected/  
A lighthouse, a voyage/  
For history's sake/  
Would you please take notice?/_

"Hey guys," Claire said. "We're on TV."

Sure enough, their faces were flashing across the screen in quick succession, clips so devastatingly revealing that they all began to feel queasy, drunk-sick: Peter in Isaac's apartment, throwing him across the room with telekinesis; Claire coming out of her house in Odessa, covered with burns that melted to nothing; footage that looked like Hollywood special effects from the Monticello breakout. Their names were blazoned under them like Most Wanted mug shots, and the perfectly coiffed anchorwoman was telling her watchers that they were extremely dangerous and should not be approached.

While the rest of them stood, rigor mortis, struck useless by this thoroughly unexpected blow, one person (who, in their defense, had known about this before the fact) moved to instant action. Jonathan snatched his hat off and shoved it onto Claire's head, pulling it low over her face and covering as much of her suddenly-recognizable blond curls as possible. Bennet broke out of the stupor at his movement, pulling Claire into him and shielding her with his body.

"Katie, Claire, and Peter have all been flagged," he said in a brisk, urgent whisper. "Nathan and Jonathan, you appear to be safe for now. Katie, I need you to shift immediately and as unobtrusively as possible—it doesn't matter what form you take, just get out of that one. Nathan, get Peter's attention and get him to shift as well, see if you can get him away from security. Jonathan, go to the nearest in-airport shop and get me some kind of hair dye—Katie, go with him and get scissors and a flat iron, if you can find one. I'm taking Claire to the Starbucks outside the terminal—I want everyone there in five minutes."

---

They had a some trouble locating each other at the Starbuck's—which was a positive thing, Nathan realized, as it meant that their new disguises were vastly effective, enough to fool a brother or a father. Peter had taken the form of the taxi driver that had gotten them to the airport that morning, a skinny collegiate person with black-rimmed glasses. Katie now appeared to be a tall Latina woman with masses of hair, who looked like a dancer and moved with a well-faked Hispanic rhythm. Claire was the biggest shocker, still herself but drastically, unrecognizably altered—her hair was now a dark chocolate brown, expertly cut by Katie to just below the shoulder and ironed perfectly straight. She looked older, and harsher, less sweet and approachable, and most importantly, nothing like Claire Bennet from Odessa.

As soon as they'd all managed to find each other, they pulled three tables together in the corner of the coffee shop and crowded into each other for comfort, heads bowed over their coffees in weary survival. "Now what?" Peter asked, and everyone started slightly to hear his voice, which he hadn't bothered to change to match his new form.

"I've changed our flight plans," Nathan told them. "We're flying out at four o'clock tomorrow afternoon. By then, I'll have my hands on new IDs and tickets for you three under new names. If anyone recognizes you before then—unlikely—then we'll have a severe problem, so everyone cross their fingers for luck."

"The story is," Mr. Bennet informed them, "that Linderman's private laboratory had some kind of an accident involving toxic chemicals, in which all of you were supposedly caught up. I guess he's not ready to come absolutely clean yet, but it doesn't matter for us—his half-truths are damaging enough. Apparently, you've all gone completely mad from the mutations and are very dangerous, should be apprehended by the police, et cetera. The point is, he's got us pretty well boxed in from all sides now."

Jonathan slid his watch around his wrist until he could glance at the face with the appropriate teenage cazsh. "Four o'clock, huh? That give us, what, thirteen hours? I assume we have some kind of a plan?"

"I thought maybe we'd just hang around Starbucks all night," Nathan said irritably. "We could order lots of biscotti and camp out under the tables. Doesn't that sound fun?"

"Whoa there, Sarcasm Man, it's a reasonable question," Peter defended. "Are we thinking hotel, or should we just call Linderman now and give him a treasure map with a big red X?"

"Well, yes, obviously, Linderman will have the hotels watched," Nathan relented. "But I think if we split up a little and use false names, we should be all right."

"False names?" Jonathan scoffed, busy eating the whipped cream from the top of his frappucino with a spoon. "Come on, guys, don't you think this is all getting a bit Nancy Drew?"

"You're certainly welcome to leave," Mr. Bennet said coolly.

Katie put a hand on Jonathan's arm, subtly moving herself between him and the rest of the table. "You said something about a hotel?" she intervened, gently steering back to topic.

"Yes, I did," Nathan confirmed. "You, Peter, and I will be staying in one hotel, while Jonathan and Claire check into another one."

Jonathan grinned. "I take it all back—I _like_ this plan."

"Mr. Bennet will, of course, be with them at all times," Nathan finished, glowering at Jonathan's cheerful innuendo.

"Ah," Jonathan said, leaning back in his chair. "The fine print."

"So that's it, then," Mr. Bennet finished, ignoring Jonathan through sheer force of will (which fortunately, he wasn't short on). "Let's get out of this airport."

They stood, half-consumed coffees in hand, and wandered out of the restaurant in carefully-scattered pairs and threes. It looked natural, unnoticeable—by now, they were all pros at undercover, as good as any CIA operative or cheating husband. Peter made sure he ended up walking next to Claire—he'd noticed her unusual silence at the table, picking up her I'm-upset vibe like it was second nature, now, to worry about her and gage her happiness.

"You okay?" he asked her as they left, moving fast enough to fit in with the rest of the power-walkers anxious to catch their flights, careful not to collide with anyone who might look too closely.

"Yeah," she said unconvincingly.

"Liar," he accused. "What's wrong?"

"It's nothing," she said. "It's stupid."

"I don't care," he told her. "Tell me anyway. I hear it's therapeutic, telling another person—haven't you seen 'Oprah'?"

"Oh," she said unhappily. "It's just—my _hair._"

"Aha," he said understandingly—sometimes he forgot that she was a sixteen-year-old girl, with her growing stronger and more trustworthy every minute, more dependable than most adults he knew. "Well, for what's it worth, I think it looks great. Very edgy."

"I told you it was stupid," she said. "I guess it was sort of the last thing I had that was _me_, you know? I haven't been acting like myself for weeks, but I could cope with that, because it helped me survive and all—but now, God, Peter, I don't even _look _like me anymore. I used to define myself as this blond cheerleader, but now I'm not a cheerleader and I'm not even _blond_, and I don't know _what _I am. It makes me dizzy to think about it."

He pulled her in and kissed her on the forehead, hoping she couldn't see the small smile on his face. He hoped he had children someday, he really did—but for now, Claire was a good substitute. "If the worst thing you've got to worry about is your hair," he told her, "I think we're doing pretty good."

---

Jonathan waited for Claire and her father to tangle themselves up in an intense father-daughter discussion (which they were strangely inclined to do—Jonathan had never seen a parent and child so bizarrely close) before he left. Sadly, there were no balconies in their suite, so he went walking down the hall until he found a suitable substitute, positioning himself in a niche by the ice machine before making his call.

"Hi, Jessica," he said. "Guess where we are?"


	32. Chapter 32

_My heart has lost its wind now/  
Broken like a dead sail/  
My love has drifted out to sea/_

"Have you ever done yoga, Peter?" Katie asked, looking up at him from where she sat cross-legged on the floor.

"You may not have noticed," he told her patiently, "but I'm a boy."

"Oh, don't be sexist," she scolded, grabbing his arm and pulling him down beside her. "Boys do yoga, too."

"Boys who are straight?" Peter asked doubtfully.

"I'm sure I wouldn't know," she said breezily. "You don't have to freak out, we're not going to be doing any weird poses or anything. It's just the relaxation part of it that I want you to focus on, the posture and meditation and things—it'll help you get control of your emotions. I don't suppose you're Buddhist?"

"Sadly, no," he said, looking at her as if he thought she might be crazy, but found it rather appealing. "Sorry to disappoint."

"No such luck, I guess," she said. "Well, we'll just have to start from the beginning—sit down."

"I _am _sitting down," he argued.

"No—like this," she said, sitting on her heels, back as straight as if she'd replaced her spine with a steel pole.

"That makes my feet hurt," Peter complained quietly, drawing a tolerant sigh from his teacher.

"Now, breathe," she instructed.

"I _am_—"

"Breathe like this," she interrupted neatly. "Deep breaths from your stomach, cleansing breaths. You're not breathing deep enough." She put her hand on his stomach and pushed, collapsing the air out of his lungs. "I need you to breathe deeply enough to make my hand move."

"Would you be really angry with me if I told you that tickled?" Peter said in a small voice.

She lost her composure, jabbing him hard with her hand. He laughed and grabbed her wrist, and suddenly the situation was flipped on its head, altogether different. The air sucked out of the room in a scandalized gasp, leaving them in an awkward limbo, frozen and not sure what to do with each other. After a second, Peter dropped her hand, and she pulled away like she'd touched something slimy and disgusting, both stunned at the possibilities being forced on them.

Peter rubbed a hand over his forehead, intensely confused. "Damn it," he said quietly. "This is not working."

She pushed a lock of hair self-consciously behind her ear, suddenly finding it vitally important not to look at him. "It isn't, is it?" she agreed. "I think we need to have a DTR."

"Sorry? A what, now?"

"Oh," she said sadly. "I have been out of it for a _very_ long time, haven't I?"

"Eight years is a long time," he reminded unhelpfully.

"DTR," she defined, "means 'determining the relationship'. We need to determine our relationship."

"All right," Peter said gamely. "The relationship—here's what it is, as I see it. You are a very attractive woman who happens to have been thrown into my life. I'm twenty-six, single, and relatively disease-free; I'm attracted to you. It happens."

"Okay, then," she said, not sure whether to be insulted or flattered, "all cards on the table, I'm attracted to you, too—to an alarming extent, actually, it's really been freaking me out."

"Well, there we go," Peter said helplessly, looking down at his hands. "Now what?"

"Look," she said. "Intense mutual attraction aside, I have to tell you that I'm really not ready for a relationship right now. It's nothing personal—believe me, if I wanted to date anyone, it would be you—I just…_can't. _I'm just barely getting used to the world again, and I'm running for my life, and there simply isn't enough of me available for anything but keeping myself alive."

"You know what, that works for me," Peter said. "This isn't exactly something I like to talk about, but I ended a relationship pretty, um…violently, just a couple of weeks ago. I'm not exactly ready to go jumping back into anything just yet."

"So that's it, then," Katie said awkwardly. "We just—won't do anything. We'll just ignore it."

"Right," he agreed firmly. "Ignore it."

"Right."

"Exactly."

"Okay, then," Katie said, brushing her discomfort aside with unusual brusqueness. "Let's see if we can get you breathing right."

---

Nathan felt a little uneasy about leaving Katie and Peter alone, in a bedroom no less—Peter didn't have a very good track record at keeping his hands to himself, once he liked a girl. He was far too charming for his own good, and he went after what he wanted, whether or not it happened to be available. There was nothing for it, though—he certainly wasn't going to sit around playing chaperone, watching those two blush and flirt like fifth graders with a crush. He thought his brother had enough sense not to get involved in anything that might hurt him, but then, Peter had done some pretty stupid things in the past for love. All he could do was cross his fingers and hope Peter could keep his head enough to see that now was _not _the time, not even close.

He picked up the hotel phone and dialed the number Mr. Bennet had given him, twisting the cord around his hand as he waited for connection.

"Hello?" Mr. Bennet said, rock-steady tenor blocking out the buzz of the phone's static.

"Bennet," Nathan said, half confirmation, half accusation. "We're here at the Marriot, all snug in our rooms with mints on our pillows. Any gratuitous violence going on over there?"

"There's about to be," Mr. Bennet said, and for the first time Nathan noticed the subtle strain in his voice, internal pressure causing it to bend and splinter very slightly. "This kid is working on my last nerve, and after that's gone I can't be responsible for my actions."

"Don't complain," Nathan consoled him sardonically. "I'm stuck here with the Amazing Almost-lovers, and they are no cakewalk." He was having that irritating connection with Mr. Bennet again, the feeling of being the only two adults on a high school field trip. He didn't like to relate so closely with this man—there was only room for one straight-faced, suit-wearing, morally-grey Nathan Petrelli in the world, and Mr. Bennet was coming dangerously close. "Well, as much as I love talking to you on the phone, if everything is all right, I'm just going to go," he said unapologetically.

"Call me if there are problems, if they're serious enough to call and not serious enough that you're still alive."

"Will do." Nathan dropped the phone back on its receiver like it had bitten him, alarmed as always by the déjà vu, turned around, and nearly had a heart attack.

Standing less than a foot away, absolutely nose-to-nose with him, was Jessica Sanders. He yelled in surprise and backpedaled, keeping just enough presence of mind to throw a chair between them but not enough to realize that a chair probably wasn't going to be much of an obstacle for this cold blond killer.

"No," she said quickly, desperately, holding her hands up (this was not comforting to Nathan, as one of the hands held a gun). "Nathan, it's me, it's Niki. I'm not going to hurt you."

Now that he looked, he could see the subtle differences in her face, the softer jawline and the guilty eyes. He still didn't know what exactly was wrong with this woman, but he'd placed his bets on manic schizophrenia, and he was pretty sure he was seeing the 'nice' side of his sometime lover. But not sure enough to trust her. "Stop," he said harshly as she stepped toward him. "Don't come any closer."

"Nathan, I have to hurry," she plead. "I don't know when she's going to come back."

"You said that last time, and it doesn't make any sense," Nathan said furiously. "Would you _please_ tell me what's going on?"

Suddenly Niki's face changed, lines crystallizing into biting, indestructible ice, and the gun came up. "Sorry," Jessica said, "she doesn't like to talk about it, and that's not why we're here."

"Then why are you here?" Nathan asked tensely, feeling like a prisoner of war, blindfolded in front of a one-woman firing squad.

She gave him a blazing grin that showed all her teeth and threw her gun to the ground, sending it skittering across the tile to his feet. "I've switched sides," she told him. "I want to be on your team now."


	33. Chapter 33

_I am your thought/_

_But the water is amnesia/  
My name is on the tip of your tongue/  
My image is slipping/_

"She said _what?_"

"That's exactly what she said," Nathan said defensively. "She said she's switched sides and she wants to help us."

"I'm sorry," Niki said, feeling a massive migraine sneaking up her temples. "I just don't understand why she would ever say that, unless she's lying or it's some kind of a trick."

"Pretty lame trick," Nathan commented. "I think we all learned not to trust 'I'm on your team now' back in third-grade snowball fights."

"I wouldn't put it past her to double-cross Linderman, but she'd have to at least have a _reason_, wouldn't she?"

"One would think so," Nathan agreed. "But look, before we go nitpicking at her motives, could you please explain to me what is going on here? I mean, one minute I'm talking to a raging female Rambo, and the next minute you're back, and to be honest I'm thinking about calling the nearest psych ward."

"Tried that already," Niki said with a painful smile. "It didn't take. I know you're confused, Nathan, but it's really hard to explain."

He reached out and took her hand, comforting, pressuring. "Try," he commanded.

Niki felt a little skitter of purely physical thrill run up her arm from where he touched, the pleasant lust that this sharp, devastating man always seemed to invoke in her. Truth be told, she was glad that someone was taking control of her again. She had never been much of anything when she was by herself; just a shell waiting to be filled by someone stronger. That was probably why she was so vulnerable to Jessica, why every minute was now fight just to keep control of her own body, to be the one who chose if she moved or breathed or lied or killed. "There's this…_other_ person inside of me," she explained unhappily. "I can't control her, she's really strong and she doesn't care about hurting people. I don't know where she came from or why she's there, but she's in me and I can't get her out." She saw Nathan's carefully expressionless face, plastered over with polite pretending, and something flared up inside of her, angry and Jessica-strong. She pulled her hand out of his grip, pushing away from him. "I'm not crazy," she snapped.

"Maybe not," he said diplomatically. "We're going to have to table the question for now, because we have more important things to deal with. For example: is Jessica sincere, and what does she want?"

Niki shook her head, exhausted, feeling hopeless. "I don't know," she said. "I'm not going to lie, she could be a real help to you—she can do some incredible things. I just don't think that you can trust her, not ever, and I don't know when I'll be able to get control again. She's locked me out for days before, weeks at a time—I'm not sure I'm going to do much good in this."

Nathan sat back, rubbing his fist against his jaw, trying to decide whether or not to let loose the brutal bluntness that was building up against the back of his throat. This woman either needed a slap in the face or a padded cell, and he could only give her one of them—if he was wrong, though, he could seriously damage her usefulness. But there was nothing for it. "You know what I think, Niki?" he said sharply, and her head came up like he _had_ slapped her, surprised at his tone. "I think that you're being weak, lazy, and whiny, and that's not who you are. It sounds to me like this Jessica, whoever she is, at least knows what she wants and has the guts to go get it, unlike you. Why are you just letting you push you around like this? Lose the victimization, lose the weepy self-pity, and kick this bitch the hell out of your body!"

Niki stared at him, speechless, blankly dumbfounded, and for a moment he though _Oh great. Good job, Nathan, you've blown her brain out the back of her head. Very well done._ Then, just as she was about to scream at him or burst into tears or kiss him, the moment was indecorously ended by Peter and Katie's entrance into the room. At first, they didn't see Nathan and Niki, caught up in some sort of ridiculous discussion about breathing, but just as Nathan though they might not notice them at all, they turned. And stared. And yelled at the top of their lungs, horrified to see the woman who had so recently been terrorizing them, shooting them up and holding them hostage.

"It's okay!" Nathan said hurriedly, jumping out of his seat. "Hey, it's okay, shut up!"

Peter had pushed Katie behind him in that automatic, kill-me-first protective way he had, glaring suspiciously at Nathan as if he thought he might be the devil or Candice. "How is it okay?" he asked furiously. "Please, Nathan, enlighten me as to how it's okay."

"This isn't the woman who's been after us," Nathan explained. "Well—it _is _the woman who's been after us, technically, but she's okay right now. She's not going to hurt us."

Katie dropped a glance on him, looking entirely unconvinced. "That doesn't make any sense," she told him tautly, "and if it doesn't start making sense in thirty seconds or less, I'm going to run back in that room and lock the door."

Nathan glanced back at Niki for help (he realized belatedly that he was doing the same thing as Peter, shielding Niki away from them with his body—when had he become such a hero?) , but she still looked mildly shellshocked, obviously not planning to be any help despite his rousing pep talk. "Just think of it as kind of an evil twin thing, okay?" Nathan said exasperatedly. "Like schizophrenia or something, two personalities in one body. The point is, this is the good twin."

"Right," Peter said vaguely, still not moving, searching Niki's face for signs of sudden hostility—and finding them. Nathan heard her moving behind him and turned in time to see her put a hand on her head, looking as if she were about to be sick. Suddenly, she was Jessica, all concave harshness and danger—then she was Niki again, and Jessica, with a flickering abruptness that was disturbing to watch.

"I—" she said, then cut off, tried again. "I have to leave." A beat, a short pitched struggle. "It's Jessica—I'll come back if I can." She walked swiftly to the door and slid out of the room, leaving questions and fear behind her.

Peter stared after her, nonplussed. "Strange girl," he said.

---

Sylar pulled his collar up against the rain, ducking his head so the sludgy downpour wouldn't get in his face. _Weather_, he decided miserably. _I need to find someone who can control the weather._ The sky hadn't been quite able to pick if it wanted to rain or snow, and had eventually settled on a half-solid sleet that hit like a bullet but was still liquid enough to slide down his shirt and chill him through.

He wished he could go into the hotel. He was positive he'd finally located the so-elusive Petrellis, and the hatred and hunger to get at them was nearly more than he could control, but he hadn't lost the last of his senses yet. He was now, unfortunately, a well-known face, broadcast regularly across network screens like he was some kind of common criminal, some dangerous madman. It was ridiculous; it was amazing. They didn't understand at all. He'd always wanted to have his name up in the metaphorical lights, and it was a thrill to see it crawl across the televisions, but it was a thrill that he couldn't appreciate in balance with its inconvenience.

For example, it was hindering him now in that he simply couldn't stroll into the lobby of the Marriot, dripping all over their bargain carpets and pretending to be an ambiguous, innocent guest. It was a shame, really, because he was very good at fooling people, and he loved to see the looks on their faces when they realized just who he was. Which they always did, he could never hold it for long—he needed them to know, needed that moment of realization. It fed him like a shot of electricity, lit him up like a match.

He'd just begun to formulate the skeleton of a plan, when the woman walked out of the hotel. She was beautiful, and Sylar was instantly attracted to her, but not because of her beauty. She pinged against his mind like a warning radar blip, every nerve screaming that she was one of _them_—prey. He was after her before he could think, dropping in behind her shoulder with a quick, predatory stride.

She noticed. She seemed to feel him behind her at once and snapped around to face him, wet blond hair cutting across her face and with such a vicious, confident expression that he actually took a step back. _Well. Perhaps not prey after all._ But even predators could be taken down, and Sylar was not afraid of this woman.

He moved before she could, grabbing her by the neck and slamming her back into the hotel doors. They glass spiderwebbed under the blow, screaming about-to-break behind her, but she was not so fragile—she pulled his arm away with seemingly little effort, getting her foot up between them and shoving him away, _hard_, her heel gouging into his chest as he fell away, surprised at her force. _Super-strength, is that it?_ _That could be useful. _And there it was—the uncontrollable avarice, the power-lust that flooded his senses and made her into a thing, an object to be consumed and discarded. Not a person; nothing more than an obstacle.

Certainly not an easy one, though—before he had a chance to recover, she got in a neat roundhouse kick, delivered from her swimsuit-model legs with the power of a pile driver behind it. He fell to the wet pavement, and she kicked him, square in the head. He nearly went unconscious, and he spat blood onto the sidewalk, black and red blurring together in his vision.

That was it. Time to stop messing around with this woman. He was not some random attacker, not some street fighter brawling in the mud. He was Sylar—he was a god—and she would know it.

He threw his hands up just as she aimed another kick at him, slamming her foot to a halt inches away from his face. He watched her dawning dismay as he slowly turned the tables, forcing her back, away from him—then he let loose, tossing her back into the wall like she was a rag doll, like she was nothing.

As he closed in for the kill, a concierge ran out of the hotel, drawn by the noise. Sylar didn't even look at the man, only flicked a finger at him, an invisible knife that slashed across the man's throat and sent him tumbling soundlessly into the rain-swollen gutter. He saw the woman's eyes widen at his kill, and felt her fear like burning sunrays, her acknowledgement and homage to his power. He let himself bask in it for only a moment—he was not stupid, only obsessed—and then he went to work.

He watched her blood pour down her face and mix with the rain. He took her life and even regretted it, for a moment. _Only for now_, he thought. _Only for now, the blood and the screaming. Peter Petrelli, you're next. _

---

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thank you so much for sticking with me through all this infuriating mess—still don't know quite what's up with my chapters disappearing and reappearing all over the place, but what can you do? Anyway, if you ever can't get into a chapter, shoot me a message and I'll send it to you. Or, you can go to heroesfiction. because all the chapters will be posted there. Thanks again! You guys are awesome!


	34. Chapter 34

_I saw this one coming, there's no use in running/_

_Safe in the distance, ignorantly witnessing/_

_Everyone scattered as I had a vision/_

_A regret, you might say, a worry, you might say/_

Despite the human tendency to be drawn to disaster, Nathan had come to realize that when one heard hysterical screams, the smartest idea was to run _away_ from them, not toward. So, when they went down from their rooms for dinner (Katie, the most cautious of them, had argued for room service, but Nathan had started to see that look in Peter's eye, the one he used to get on road trips that said he was about to go absolutely stir-crazy, would explode in five minutes and counting) and heard the commotion around the front door, he promptly grabbed the other two and turned them around, pushing them back toward the stairs.

"Go back to the room," he told them. "I'll see what's going on." However impressive that sounded, it consisted of only one thing: him grabbing the nearest bystander and asking them what had happened. Those were his favorite kinds of phrases—the ones that sounded fantastic coming out of his mouth but required little effort on his part. _Am I a politician, or what?_ "Excuse me, miss," he asked the receptionist. "Can you tell me what happened here?"

"It was _terrible_," she said, gushing out horrified scandal. "One of those crazy mutants from the news was right here outside our hotel! He attacked this blond lady, took the top of her head right off, and there's blood all over the doors, it is _so_ gross."

"A _blond_ lady?" Nathan asked, feeling suddenly ill.

"Yeah," she said earnestly. "He, like, sawed her head open or something, and he killed the concierge too. The police don't even know where he went, he could be _anywhere_."

Caught up in her own indulgent terror, she didn't notice Nathan striding away, filling from his feet up with anticipated disaster. He shouldered his way mercilessly through the crowd with the instinct of a born New Yorker, until he was stopped by the thin plastic police line and the sight he'd been hoping not to see.

He recognized her instantly, destroyed as she was, crumpled and wet, broken on the uncompromising hate of one mad fellow man. Laying there, she was all Niki, victimized and shattered for the last time, ultimately too hollow to hold. He backed away with deadened, echoing horror, not caring that he was bumping into people, insensate of their bodies against him. _There's another one,_ he thought numbly. _There's another one gone. Everything I touch breaks and bleeds. I'm a virus, I'm an acid, I'm a curse. I love it and it withers. I touch it and it dies._

He throttled back his blind guilt and breakdown, bottlenecking it before it could reach his heart. _This had nothing to do with you_, he told himself sharply_. She was a one-night stand, she was nothing. She was killed by Sylar, and he'll kill us all if you don't get a grip. _He brought his shoulders back up, squaring out melodrama and morality. Let her husband cry for her. Nathan had more important things to do.

---

When Nathan got back to their room (it took longer than expected—he'd had to stop once to be violently sick, unable to rid himself of the blood-and-blond image of Niki's corpse) he was horrified to see Peter halfway out the window, staring shamelessly down at the crime scene. He crossed the room in seconds and dragged Peter into the room, shoving him back with more force than strictly necessary, venting his strain on his senseless kid brother.

"What are you doing?" he yelled. "You're a nationally wanted fugitive, you idiot!"

"I'm sorry," snapped Peter, pushing his hands away. "I guess I was just wondering if I was going to _die_ anytime soon. Would you mind telling us down here at the kid's table what the hell is going on?"

Katie stood quickly and got between them, throwing herself on the train tracks with the fearless conciliation that seemed to be instinct to her. "Hey!" she interjected. "We don't have time for this! Nathan, tell us what happened."

Nathan felt all the anger draining out of him, leaving weaker feelings he'd been hoping to miss, and he sat down heavily in the chair. "It's Niki," he said.

"Niki," Peter said blankly. Then: "Oh, crazy girl? What about her?"

"She's dead." He dropped the news like a rock, glad to be rid of it. "Sylar was outside the hotel, and he caught her and killed her."

Peter's brain stopped dead at the word 'Sylar', bursting into panicked flame. "Sylar? Well, what happened? Where is he?"

"I don't know," Nathan said. "He just disappeared, they don't know where he's gone. He must have been after us, but he found her first."

Katie was already up, busy pulling out luggage with efficient briskness. "We need to leave, now," she told them. "He's probably still around, and if he doesn't get us, the police will."

Nathan had just managed to kick himself into action, getting up out of the chair, when the phone rang. The whole room froze, staring at the unwelcome, startling intrusion. With a meaning look of apprehension, Nathan picked it up. "Hello?"

His feeling of foreboding was instantly confirmed as he heard the voice on the other end: Linderman. "Hello, Nathan. How are you?"

Nathan shot a frantic glance at Peter and Katie, hoping they could interpret the warning in his eyes and violent gestures. "Suddenly much worse, Mr. Linderman. How did you get this number?"

"Don't be foolish," he chided evenly. "I'm not letting you slip away from me just yet."

"You know where we are," Nathan accused. "Why haven't you just sent your thugs after us? What do you want?"

"I want Peter," Linderman said simply.

"Well, I know _that_," Nathan bit off, "and I have to tell you, I'm running out of ways to say no. He's not a bargaining chip, he's my brother." Peter raised his eyebrows at Katie, as if to say _oh—they're talking about me again._

"If only you knew what you could bargain," Linderman said thoughtfully. "Don't you want the power back, Nathan?"

"Of course I want the power back," Nathan replied flatly. "I want it back so it kills me."

"Then do as I say." Linderman's voice tightened to a sudden flint edge, sharp, hard, commanding. "It's easier than you think, Nathan. Close your eyes and pull the trigger, and the rest will follow."

Nathan tried not to look at Peter, but he felt his brother's eyes on him, so trusting that they burned against his corrupt half-conscience. Peter would never guess the thoughts running through Nathan's head, how close to the surface the greed had pushed, how seriously he was considering throwing him to the wolves. He opened his mouth to say yes, take him, I can live without him but I can't live without the power—and couldn't get it out, choked on Peter's trust. He couldn't do it. He couldn't pull the trigger, not while Peter was sitting right there, watching him raise the gun but not moving, trusting his brother to save him even from himself.

"I'm hanging up now, Mr. Linderman," he said with some effort. "And by the way, Jessica Sanders is dead."

"Nathan—" Linderman tried, but no use—Nathan slammed the phone down, breaking the circuit of the siren song before Linderman could drag him out by his weakness.

As he backed away from the phone, watching it warily in case it should start ringing, he felt Peter's arms wrap around him. "I love you, Nathan," Peter said, as uncomplicatedly sincere as when he'd been six.

After a second, Nathan's irritation and indecision dissolved into somewhat-deeper love, and he returned Peter's hug, putting an arm around his neck. "You'd better," he said.

---

Gabriel came awake with a gasp, feeling like a swimmer bursting up from the water, nearly drowned and blinded by the unfamiliar light of the sun. He was confused and disoriented, memories jumbled all in a mess. He didn't know where he was. He barely knew who he was.

His first conscious thought was of disaster, murder and chaos, and one line of memory fell into place. He opened his eyes to blood on his hands, and the red slick of it sparked a name: Sylar. In the scarlet-streaked glass behind him, he caught a glance of his reflection—only it wasn't him. It wasn't Gabriel Grey but a hungry-eyed visceral creature, a frightening man who cared not at all about the blood.

The sight, the name, sent a violent reaction tearing through him, waking a lethal personality that roiled beneath his awareness, barely contained, struggling to break loose. Flashes of the last seven months blasted across the backs of his eyes, terrifying images of cold death and hot obsession. He remembered.

_Oh God, what have I done?_

He heard sirens behind him, their lights turning the scene of carnage into noir-contrast blues and reds. A spotlight snapped on, pinning him back against the wall with its blazing white light. He threw his hands up to protect his eyes, and did what his instincts told him to do—he ran, out down the alley through the sheeting cover of the rain. _Oh God, forgive me_. _I never wanted this. _

_I wanted to be someone. I didn't want to be him. _


	35. Chapter 35

_You are the dark ocean bottom/  
And I am the fast sinking anchor/  
Should I fall for you?/_

Candice could tell from Linderman's face that Nathan had hung up on him, and she couldn't keep a smirk from her face. "_That's_ classy," she said. "What a sweet guy."

Linderman put the phone back on its cradle, disappointed but resigned. "It was worth a try," he said calmly.

"Do you really want the kid that badly?" Candice asked, trying to understand how Peter Petrelli fit into the grand scheme of destiny and destruction.

"No," Linderman said honestly. "Not so very badly. What I want is for Nathan to give him up. I want him to see that he can."

"Huh," said Candice. "And what if he can't?"

Linderman sat down behind his desk, eyes shuttering to businesslike glass. "Then we might have to give him a little help."

Candice laughed, a slashing brittle sound. "Now _there's _a plan I can get behind. I don't trust these Petrellis—they've got too much damn _nobility_." She said the word like it was something viral and pitiable, a terminal disease. "Where'd that come from, anyway? Their father never had any."

"Ah," Linderman said sadly, "you only knew him at the end of his life, Candice. You only saw him after I'd gotten to him. David Petrelli was, at one time, the noblest soul I'd ever known—but that changed. I've always suspected that was why he disliked poor Peter—Peter was a carbon-copy of that old honest self, a constant reminder of the better man he used to be.

Incidentally, that's why I've never tried to turn Peter. I know now what a disaster that ends up, twisting a fundamentally good man against his better nature until he hates himself, but can't escape what he's become, and tears himself apart from the inside out. It's not a pretty thing to see, Candice."

Nathan is a much better choice—he's the other side of his father, the cold professional I made him into. He's the part of his father that learned about the world and how to survive in it, without the troublesome instinctual goodness to ruin it. Instead of a good man struggling to be good, Nathan is a bad man struggling to be good—and that kind of man is much easier to take down."

Nathan is perfect—it's Peter that's the problem here. While Nathan was conveniently born without a conscience, he was given his brother as a substitute. I've only been successful in turning him against Peter a handful of times, and each time, Nathan has nearly wrenched himself out of my control with the guilt. They cannot be separated voluntarily, I don't think."

Candice was fidgeting with a paperweight—an elaborately carved wooden spider—looking like a student in a boring history lecture. "I know, Candice, you're not particularly interested in anything I'm saying. I do, however, have a reason for telling you all this. I'm simply giving you background on a target—I'm sending you after them."

Candice started in surprise, accidentally snapping a leg off the spider. "What? Are you sure?"

He raised his tufted white eyebrows at her. "Is there a reason I shouldn't?"

"No," she lied. "There's nothing."

"Good. Now, they're leaving soon for New York City, so we'll get you on a plane as soon as possible and put you in position. Your target will be Peter—we must get him away from his brother. I want him alive, if at all possible, but you're authorized to do anything that's necessary. Jessica Sanders has been killed, so your only ally in the field will be Jonathan—he's placed within the group, and will be making regular calls to you. He will—Candice? Candice," he said patiently, taking in her intense, inattentive stare, "have you heard a word I've said?"

"Yeah," she said absently. "New York. Jonathan. Peter Petrelli."

He sighed. "Well, at least you've got the basics."

---

Mr. Bennet was actually glad the doorbell rang when it did, because he'd let Jonathan suck him into another argument—over whether or not his playing music too loudly was actually hazardous, not only to their ears but their safety—and he'd been feeling quite capable of murder when then two-tone bell cut into the moment.

His first thought was _oh, perfect, I was actually right, someone's come to see about the music_. Instead, he opened the door on a harassed-looking trio of fellow fugitives, bags in hand with downturned, stress-lined mouths. "What happened?" he asked resignedly, a veteran of unforeseen disasters and Plan Bs.

"Sylar," Nathan said shortly as he walked in, dropping his suitcase on the floor. "We had an encounter with that Sanders woman, and when he came at us, he found her first and killed her. The police were everywhere trying to find him, and we don't know where he went, he's run off."

"Needless to say, we didn't stick around," Katie told him.

Claire wandered out of the bathroom, hair damp from showering, and her eyes lit up at this sight of their visitors. "Peter! What are you doing here?" She rushed over to give him an enthusiastic, if slightly wet hug.

"Oh, some stuff happened," he said vaguely. "We're staying with you now."

"Fantastic," Jonathan chimed in from the other side of the room. "Maybe you can convince this crazy man that The White Stripes are _not_ noise pollution, and they don't need a bass."

"I really think we have more important things to discuss," Nathan said condescendingly, making Jonathan bristle as he'd intended. "For example, whether or not we can stay here. At the Marriot, we got an in-suite call from Mr. Linderman."

"Linderman?" Mr. Bennet bit back an obscenity, conscious of his daughter's presence. "How does he always know where we are?"

"Couldn't tell you," Katie said grimly, "but if we found us there, he'll find us here."

"And if we go somewhere else, he'll find us _there_," Jonathan said. "What's your point?"

They were silent for a moment, festering under the good sense of his comment. "He's right," Mr. Bennet said, looking as if the words made him sick. "We might as well stay here—there's nowhere safer that we could go."

"All right," Peter said, "but how are we going to know if Linderman comes after us?"

"We can set up some kind of a watch," Nathan proposed. "We'll go to the airport in the morning, but till then someone should be up at all times."

"Two-hour watches should be fine," Mr. Bennet said. "There are enough of us."

"I'll take the first one," Peter said. "I'm too wound up to sleep anyway."

"I'll take the second one," Claire said, and everyone promptly turned to her, as surprised as if she'd told them she was getting married to Linderman in the Bahamas next week. "Don't act so shocked," she said irritably. "I'm not here to stand around and bat my eyes—I can take care of myself, and I can take care of the rest of you in the bargain."

Mr. Bennet reached out and took her hand—he'd missed the majority of her forced growth and hardening, and he was still unused to this new, adult Claire. "Are you sure, honey?"

Her eyes glittered, ready to tear into anyone who questioned her. "Yes, I'm sure."

He wondered what he was to do now. He'd become the person he was—a man totally unlike what he'd been ten years ago, confusingly good and moral—because of one reason alone, and that reason was Claire. Every good decision and admirable trait had grown from protecting her—if she didn't need protection anymore, then what was he? Good or evil?

He did not say any of this—he knew her better, even now. "All right," he said.

---

Claire was not afraid of the dark—but she was afraid. She was afraid of the things that might be hiding in the dark, of the impenetrable cover that concealed so much from her. She told herself that she didn't care, that nothing would happen, that her monsters-under-the-bed mentality was ridiculous and childish. She couldn't quite convince herself—because in her life, there _were_ monsters, real ones, and they were in the closet and under the bed and they wanted to eat her and spit out the bones. No one could tell her she was safe, because she wasn't.

She wrapped her arms around her knees and pulled herself in as small as possible. Eleven o'clock. One hour left. She was starting to regret this.

She looked down at the still, dark forms surrounding her on the floor. Six people in a two-room suite, they'd gotten rather creative with their sleeping arrangements—she could reach out and touch people on either side of her. As she looked at them, she felt comforted at the nearness of these people, who were so willing to protect her despite her insistence that she didn't need protecting. She caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of her eye, and jumped to her feet instantly, nerves humming with attack and alarm, but when the figure straightened she realized it was not Sylar, not some evil minion of Linderman's—it was Jonathan.

He came to sit by her, uncharacteristically silent and still, casting shadows into the moonlight, black hair blending into the dark. She found herself sitting suddenly straighter, alert against his presence—she was not in the mood to fend off his unsubtle forays. But he didn't speak, only gazed out the window at the teeming nightlife of Las Vegas with a peace that soothed her own fearful tension.

When he finally spoke, it was quiet, a hushed thrum of teenage tenor. "Are you afraid?"

"Afraid of what?" she responded defensively.

"I don't know. Getting caught. Linderman."

"My dad won't let him get me," she said, no longer bothered by dark possibility now that she was not alone.

"No, I guess not," Jonathan said, with an odd inflection that she couldn't identify. They were silent for another long interval, watching the golds and purples of the city lights blink for attention. Finally, he said, "Claire, do you believe in Hell?"

She had to think about this, somewhat surprised that he could provoke such deepness in her. "I don't know," she concluded. "I think I believe in God, but there are a lot of things I'm not sure about. _I _think there should be somewhere for the bad people. I don't want to see them after I die." She broke off. "I shouldn't say that. If there's a Hell, I might be going to it."

"No, you won't," he said, quietly confident. "You're _good_, Claire. You're the kind of good that spills out from your eyes and makes people want to be around you, and makes them want to throw themselves in front of bullets for you, and want to kiss you so badly that they think they might die."

She wasn't sure what to say to this—she was too tired to be uncomfortable or upset. Instead, she told him, "I killed a man. I shot him right in the heart, and I kept shooting him even after he stopped coming, until there were no bullets left and he was choking on his own blood. And then he was just…dead."

"Is that what makes you a bad person?" asked Jonathan. "Is it what you do, or is it inside of you already? And what if you make a choice and then regret it—what if you regret the choice even before you make it?"

"You mean redemption?" Claire said thoughtfully. "I don't know. I'd like to think there's a way to fix it all."

"My dad died before I was born, and I never knew my mother," Jonathan told her evenly, emotionlessly. "I never had anyone to tell me I was special, Claire. I never thought I would be anything but another human sob story, another speck of dust screaming to be noticed." Claire wondered why he sounded like he was trying to explain something to her—like he was pleading for her to understand and forgive.

For reasons she couldn't have explained, she reached out and took his hand, slipping her fingers lightly into his. He responded instantly to her touch, gripping her hand so hard it hurt, white-knuckled and somehow holding on for his life. They stayed for a moment like that, two small figures clinging to each other in the middle of a hurricane, anchoring against the wind and rain in the only way they knew how.

Then it passed, and he pulled away, not looking at her. "I bet it was self-defense," he said.

"What?"

"Then man you killed. I bet it was self-defense."

"Yeah," she said, feeling suddenly better; absolved. "Yeah, it was."

---

Jonathan set the phone down on the carpet, staring at it as if the force of his brooding could make it disappear. This was getting harder every time. He was too far in and he was starting to lose his sense of direction.

It was _her_. He could feel her slow-simmering in him, the bewitching Salem she-devil of open hearts and sad smiles. She was the weakness and the flaw, the California fault line running silent under his poured concrete foundations. She was destructive and wrong, and far too pretty He thought of Claire, letting himself sink down slowly into the attraction and amazement of her, till he couldn't hold his breath any longer and was drowning in her. Then he breathed out, shoving her out of his mind and his life and his thoughts, locking the door firmly behind. He stood in taut stillness a second longer, ensuring she was gone.

Then he picked up the phone, pressed a button, and made the call.

---

"—understood, Mr. Linderman. I'll be in contact."

Hana sat forward in her chair, leaning into the signal. This was it. She'd been tracking calls near her friends for two days now, alarming calls to Linderman's offices full of dangerous revealing words. She'd only been able to catch snippets of conversation so far, enough to make her frantic with worry, desperate to know who was betraying them all.

"Thank you. You're doing excellent work, Jonathan."

_Jonathan._

Well. That explained a lot.


	36. Chapter 36

_You've made it through the storm this far/   
You can do this, dear, it won't be hard/  
The snow won't stick to the weeping willows/  
There will be tomorrow/  
_

Peter knew the instant he was back in New York, could tell by the metallic acid bite in the air; he heard the people yelling and saw the cityline chewing up the sky, and suddenly he felt safer, that much more strong. This was his home, with all its dirt and crowds and miserable slushy winters—_home base, _he thought. _I'm safe. You can't touch me here._

He couldn't help grabbing Katie's arm and dragging her over to the window. "Look," he said. "It's the Statue of Liberty—there's her crown above that building, see? And that's where my apartment is, and there's the where that artist lives, over in SoHo—remember, the one I told you about who can paint the future? See?"

"I see, Peter," she laughed. "We're getting left behind." Sure enough, the rest of the group had forged intrepidly onward, spearheaded by Nathan and Mr. Bennet, the native New Yorker and the frequent flier.

When they got outside the airport, they were promptly run down by an aggressive cyclist, who sent an unbroken stream of obscenities back at them as he pedaled away. "Hey, I'm walking here!" Nathan yelled after him in time-honored New York style, then turned to them with a half-proud, half-apologetic smile. "Welcome to New York," he said. "The city that never shuts up."

---

To be honest—and Nathan was _always_ honest with himself, because that made it so much easier to be dishonest with others—Nathan had forgotten about Heidi. _Isn't that terrible thing to admit?_ He loved his wife, he really did. She was smart and resourceful and fascinating, and she was still the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen (including Meredith, Niki, and that redhead from two years ago), with her high-contrast delicate features, black hair and eyes too blue to be believed.

He remembered the day he'd met her—he'd run into the back of her car, a spectacular rear-end collision on Broadway. He'd come out ready to fight anyone, with his law-school fists up, but the minute she stepped out of her car, so striking and wonderful with anger lighting her porcelain cheeks to a blush, he'd lost it, words falling out of his open mouth to shatter on the pavement. He'd accepted all liability for the accident and asked her to dinner on the spot.

He loved Heidi—he did, he loved her and he would have done a lot to keep her, and frequently had to. But when she opened the door to their house, looking so much like she had that day on Broadway with her eyes brimming flames, he realized that he hadn't thought of her since he'd left, not once. He wondered what that said about him.

He masked his sudden guilt by leaning over to kiss her, hoping she'd play the 'pretend-nothing-has-happened' game with him. "Hi, hon," he said, moving to let the rest of the group in the house.

As her eyes slid over them, he found his lies suddenly failing him, simply unable to concoct an explaination for two teenagers, an unknown woman, and a man who looked like he belonged in the 1970s CIA. _Business colleagues, _his brain suggested wildly. _Long-lost cousins. Bridge club. Homeless people I found on the side of the road. _Then, exhausted, his mind suggested something it rarely resorted to: _how about the truth?_

"Heidi," he said tiredly. "I have something to tell you."

She studied his face. "You're cheating on me."

"No!" he said, surprised she would guess that the one time it actually _wasn't_ true. "Heidi, _no_."

"Then what is it?" she asked, folding her hands in her lap, keeping her eyes studiously off the parade of inexplicable guests.

"Why don't we go somewhere else?" he suggested, conscious of their gazes on him. Suspicious but willing to give him a chance, as she usually was, she rolled her chair off into a side room, not bothering to check if he followed.

As the door shut hollowly behind them, Peter turned briskly to the others. "So!" he said, glossing over marital crises and mortal peril with a light, welcoming tone. "This is our house. Well, not _my_ house, I have an apartment way out in Brooklyn, but I'm not allowed to live there until I stop getting myself killed. This is the hallway," he said pointlessly, playing realtor-slash-Vanna-White, "and over here is the kitchen. The library is over there, and this is my mother." He added her smoothly into his tour as she came into the hall, not missing a beat.

"Peter!" she said warmly, rushing forward to hug him. "I'm certainly glad to see you alive. Are you all right? Where's Nathan?"

"Nathan's trying something new with Heidi," he explained, nodding to the closed door. "He's telling her the truth."

"Oh dear," Angela said composedly. "That doesn't sound like a good idea. I've been trying to keep it from her for ages."

"Maybe he's got a higher opinion of her than you do," Peter said neutrally—he had a lot of respect for Heidi, but he certainly didn't want to argue with his mother. It was like arguing with Nathan, a losing battle, like swimming in quicksand. "But hey, Mom, this is Jonathan Madison and Katie Ramira, and you already know the Bennets."

"Specials, I assume?" she said, scanning them dispassionately, like an X-ray checking bones. Peter saw Jonathan start to shift, bored and perfectly willing to start trouble—he moved himself imperceptibly between them, unwilling to let the kid find out exactly why it was a mistake to pick a fight with Angela Petrelli. "Katie Ramira," she said thoughtfully. "We were under the impression you were dead."

"I'm not," she said easily, reaching out to shake her hand. "I'm happy to finally meet the mother of two such interesting men."

Angela gave a small smile at her word choice, catching the implications Katie had threaded in. "Yes, well, I can't take all the credit," she said cryptically. "Come in, all of you, we'll find you rooms, God knows there are enough of them in this house. Claude!" she yelled behind her. "Claude, look who's here! He's been staying with us," she explained to them. "I told Heidi he was my boyfriend."

Only Peter and Claire were brave enough to exchange amused looks, but he saw Mr. Bennet's eyebrow twitch upward uncontrollably before coming back to normal. Claude appeared out of the kitchen, half-eaten sandwich in hand. "What is—" he began, then stopped dead at the sight of them, clustered together in the entryway like carolers or uninvited guests. "Well. I was starting to hope you lot had died by now." From behind Peter, he caught a snatch of dark hair and gold-tint skin, and he nearly dropped the sandwich with surprise. "_Katie_?"

She came into view, slowly and almost shyly, smiling up at him in the way she used to when she was seventeen. "You remember me?"

He broke her shyness to bits by pulling her into a rough hug. "_Remember _you? How could I not remember the girl who nearly killed me half a dozen times? I thought you were dead!"

She sighed. "I think I'm going to make a shirt that says 'I am not dead' and wear it around for the next couple of days. Why do you all think I should be in the ground?"

"Thompson told us you died," Mr. Bennet said reasonably. "We had no grounds to doubt him."

"That was probably about the time I told them I didn't want to play anymore and they stuck me in the vaults," Katie told them. "I suppose 'she died' is as good of a cover as any. They certainly didn't expect me to get out again."

"Right, if we're having storytime, we're going somewhere more comfortable than this sardine tin," Claude said, and, to their consternation, took Mrs. Petrelli's hand and began to pull her down the hall.

"What?" she said, noticing their stares. "I already told you that Claude and I are dating."

Peter made a choked, squawking sort of noise, holding onto the stair rail for support. "You're _what?_"

"We're dating," she repeated patiently.

"You can't date _him_!" Peter protested.

"Your mum's a big girl," Claude told him, vastly amused at his reaction. "She can do pretty much what she wants."

Claire pinched Peter just as he as about to speak, pulling him back from the newly-announced couple. "Leave her alone," she whispered. "Don't you think she's been lonely?"

"_Claire_," Peter insisted as they walked down to the library. "This is not okay! What if they get _married?_ He'll be my _father_!"

She giggled, suddenly seeing an image of Claude in a church, tuxedoed with his hair slicked back. "Just when I thought this family couldn't get any weirder."


	37. Chapter 37

_Don't wake me up/  
I am still dreaming/   
The story's undone/  
Unraveled at the seams/_

Nathan wondered at Heidi's calm. He knew that his wife was no delicate shrinking blossom, and he knew that she could take a lot—but he wasn't sure _anyone_ could take what he'd told her, the comic-book saga of superpowers and death-defying feats. He was starting to think she'd gone into shock, or was waiting for a chance to knock him out and call the hospital.

"Do you understand?" he tried, hoping perhaps he'd confused her past all comprehension. It was a great deal of information he'd had to pack into her—he'd related all the epic events of the last few months (with the omission of a few strategic points, such as his relationship with Niki and Claire's full identity), even hovering a little for her to prove his point. It was enough to boggle anyone's brain right out of working order.

"Yes, Nathan," she said evenly. "I understand." He wished she'd get upset, scream or cry or throw things, confirm his view that all this was insanity, not to be believed.

Into the weird quiet came the buzz of his cell phone, and without thinking he snatched it up into his hand. Of course, he shouldn't take a call in the middle of this so-important conversation, but the display showed _Wireless_, and suddenly he was trapped. "I have to take this," he said apologetically. "Wait two seconds." He turned his attention to the phone. "Hana? Now is not a good—"

"Nathan, finally! Don't you ever answer your phone?"

"I've been on a plane for the last six hours," he said. "I know you're not familiar with real, tangible phones, but they don't actually allow them on airplanes."

"Doesn't matter," she said brusquely. "You're all in danger, Nathan."

"What are you talking about?" The words were toneless, resigned already to whatever new disaster she might present.

"It's Jonathan," she said. "He's betraying you, he works for Linderman. I heard him call Linderman, and Jessica while she was still alive. He's a plant, Nathan."

"Jonath—" he managed, mind catching the concept quick enough to make him lose his breath. "Son of a bitch."

"Tell me about it," she said humorlessly.

"Thanks, Hana, we'll deal with it," he said, going from zero to overdrive as all the implications hit him like bullets to the chest. He threw the phone back in his pocket and went for the door, stopping only when he caught his wife's arctic eyes burning up his peripheral vision. Heidi. He'd forgotten her again.

"I'm sorry, honey," he said quickly. "We're in danger, I need to go right now. We'll finish this later, I swear."

He went to grab his gun from the desk, but she already had it, holding it out to him with her eyes full of things he wasn't sure he wanted to understand. "Thanks," he said, giving her a swift kiss, and went out to make his house safe.

---

Jonathan was quite a bit better at pool than Peter. He was so much better, in fact, that Claire was finding it difficult to keep ahead, for the first time in a good five years. She watched in dismay as he neatly sunk a six ball, and Peter laughed at her expression.

"What's the matter, Miss Olympic Pool Team?" he teased. "Afraid of a little competition?" He'd long since given up trying to play against them, and had retreated to leaning against the wall and providing unhelpful commentary, a chaperone that Claire wasn't sure whether they needed.

Jonathan hadn't changed recognizably since their midnight heart-to-heart—he was still snarky, disrespectful, and inclined to bait anyone who was around him. He hadn't, however, so much as touched her since last night, had stopped shamelessly hitting on her the way he used to. She wondered what it meant—perhaps it had been some kind of a phase, and they had passed it now? She, at least, felt differently toward him—more patient and understanding, more willing to smile at him.

She watched him now, leaning to line up his shot, his hair falling across his forehead, eyes like the sky seconds before a storm—and she wished he was safe to touch. She wasn't looking for love, not at sixteen, but she was looking for a hand to hold and a mouth to kiss. She wished it could be him. The part of him she'd seen last night seemed to be a small part, and very well-concealed, but she'd liked what he's shown her. She wished she knew how to draw it out again. The rest of him, she disliked, didn't trust, and there was the problem.

His ball bounced off the edge of the pocket and spun away, and he threw his cue stick down in frustration. "Damn," he said, "I thought I had that one."

Suddenly, the door was flung open and Nathan stormed in, looking like murder with a gun in his hand. Before they had time to form questions or protests, he'd opened fire on Jonathan, barely missing him, bullets biting into the wall behind.

"Nathan!" Peter yelled, shocked at the unprovoked homicidal attack. "What the hell are you doing?"

Jonathan was not so slow to pick up on the reasoning behind the assault—the lights went off, then on again, and then the light bulbs exploded, small bursts of glass shards raining from the ceiling. In the darkness, there was a scream and a scuffle, and then the corner of the room was lit with unnatural, yellowish electric light. Jonathan was holding Claire with one arm around her neck and the other palm pressed flat against her temple, angry sparks crawling up and down his arms.

Nathan started instinctively forward, but as soon as he moved, Jonathan's hand burst with a hundred tiny bolts, sizzling as they brushed Claire's hair. "Don't come any closer!" he said. "It's her brain, right, that's where this healing thing comes from? Think she can survive ten thousand volts?"

"Nathan," Peter protested. "Jonathan, what is going on?"

"What'd he tell you, boy?" Nathan said, voice quiet, tight. "Did he tell you that you were important, that you were _special?_ Did he tell you that you were like a son to him?"

"Shut up."

"Because you're not the first person he's said those things to, believe me," Nathan pressed, "and you won't be the last."

"_Shut up!"_ Jonathan yelled, electricity snapping across him, making the air hum.

"You don't have to do this, Jonathan," Peter said, finally starting to understand the situation. "We can work this out." He was using his nurse voice, the talking-down-from-the-ledge soothing sympathetic tone that Nathan had always hated because it was so uncontrived.

"Put your gun down!" Jonathan commanded, and Nathan obeyed with a furious silent scream, tossing it into the dense, thick darkness.

Keeping his back to them, Jonathan dragged Claire to the window and opened it with one hand, creating little charred spots on the windowsill where his sparks licked the wood. _That's it_, Nathan thought wildly as he watched them leave. _I have had enough with the big, escape-route windows in this house. We are going to have skylights and that's _it_, no more of this decorative bay window nonsense. _

As Jonathan slid out the window behind Claire, she took advantage of his momentary distraction to hook her foot behind his, pushing him away and sending him stumbling as Hana had taught her. The electricity in his hands had been playing across her skin like a warm, tickling feeling—but as she shoved him, the sparks suddenly surged to life, charring her arm where he'd been holding her. He let go at once, watching in horror as the black skin healed back to normal.

"Claire!" he said, sounding sickened. "I'm sorr—"

"_Don't_," she spat, backing away from him. "Don't say it. Just _go_."

He stared at her for a moment, decisions flickering like lightning behind his eyes—and then he went, turning and running from the house to lose himself in the smoky New York sidestreets.

And then he was gone.


	38. Chapter 38

_Your eyes are drawn of charcoal/  
They're black, they're so cold, they're so imperfect/  
Because they see a sleeping world/  
Where waking isn't worth it/_

Candice found Jonathan easily, at the bar where they'd agreed to meet on the corner of West 150th. She was mildly surprised to see him drinking, underage as he was—but after all, this was New York, and it wasn't like he looked seventeen, with his world-weary gray eyes and challenging forward-thrust shoulders. He didn't so much as glance at her as she sat down next to him, only threw back a shot of some amber liquid, lit through with the pulsing white beams of the strobe light behind them.

"Well, hello there, Mr. Sunshine," she said sardonically. "I can't imagine what adolescent sorrows you might have to drown, but you're doing a pretty good job of it there."

"Nice to see you, too," he replied, speech slurring only the tiniest bit—either he hadn't been drinking long, or he could really hold his liquor. "That dress looks terrible. Have you gained weight?"

She stiffened indignantly, but then forced herself to calm down when she saw him smiling. She wouldn't play to him by lashing out—oddly enough, that seemed to be what he wanted. She wondered why it was that he did that—would up everyone around him like puppet fists, spring-coiled to punch him, prodding them into taking it out on him. Then again, he was just a kid, mobster-protégée-child-prodigy or not, and sometimes she could still catch the realization of what they were doing in his eyes. Based on that guilt, she guessed his provoking was some odd kind of masochism, his struggling last better instincts trying to punish him for his actions. _I deserve this,_ he seemed to be saying. _Come on, give me your best shot—hit me, hate me, I'll take it. I deserve it. _

He signaled to the barman as easily as if he'd done this all his life—and who knew, perhaps he had. "Another of whatever the hell I just drank, please," he ordered. The man slid a shot glass to him and he promptly tossed it back, slamming the glass down empty.

"Slow down there, kiddo," she said, alarmed. "I am _so_ not carrying you back if you pass out."

"I'm going to Hell," he said broodingly, running a finger along the edge of his glass. "She said I wasn't, but I am." He laughed bitterly, a hollow, acid sound. "I sure fooled her."

"So _that's_ what it is," Candice said triumphantly. "You've got some kind of sad crush on darling Claire. How completely, sickeningly _adorable._ What an amateur's mistake."

"Shut up," he said dully.

"You'd better let go of that one, little boy," she said gleefully. "Even if she wanted you, Peter wouldn't ever let you get near her. He'd rather die than let anyone hurt her. He's so stupid that way, he'll get himself killed sooner or later, mark my words. He probably won't even care, either, he'll be glad to take the bullet for whoever…" She broke off as she realized he was staring at her, looking as if he'd realized something and found it very interesting. "Damn," she said regretfully. "I've shown my cards, haven't I?"

"Amateur's mistake," he said humorlessly. "What a fine pair of villains we are."

"Give me one of those shots," she said grimly. "I think I need to be drunk now."

---

Gabriel was running out of options. He had some money—God knows where Sylar had gotten it, but he'd stopped asking questions. That wasn't the problem—it was one of the only things that wasn't, at this point. His most serious problem was, of course, Sylar—he'd made it very clear that he was still around, lurking just beneath the surface, watching for any weak point. He was a survivor, he was stronger than Gabriel, and he wanted _out_.

To make things even more difficult, he was a fugitive from justice, which was terrifying and horribly inconvenient. Gabriel had considered turning himself in to the police, but chances were they would just hand him over to Linderman again, and _those_ memories, at least, were very clear. He didn't know what to do, except keep his head down and keep fighting. He hadn't even dared to try getting on a plane, though he did look quite different from the pictures being circulated, with his haircut and all. He'd had to take the train to get here—'here' being New York City—and it had been a long ride.

His pieces-and-bits memories had given him a name: Mohinder Suresh. He was a genetics professor, and he knew about them, the specials, and he could help. It was a long shot, but Gabriel had grabbed it and clung to it like driftwood in a fast-moving river. He didn't know what else to do.

But now he was here, and his patchy memory had failed him again—he had no idea where Professor Suresh might be, in this city of eight million. What could he do—ask Sylar? After hours of wandering the slick streets, he'd ended up here, a bar in the West End. He wasn't even sure why he'd come in; he wasn't much of a drinker, not even as Sylar. He'd simply felt drawn to the locally-owned little venue, and barring everything else he still had his instincts, so he'd chosen to trust them. He'd been sitting here for nearly an hour now, swirling an untouched glass of vodka in his hand, hiding in the corner away from all reflective surfaces.

He should have known by now that he couldn't hide—not from himself. Every time he lifted the glass, every time he looked at the glossy black table, Sylar was staring out at him, the reflection unnervingly refusing to mirror his actions. Now, as he saw himself echoed blurrily in the table surface, he had to make the struggle again, a short pitched battle for control. Sylar never stopped trying, never rested for a minute, so Gabriel couldn't either, and it was starting to eat at him from the inside out.

He'd had enough—he got up from the table and walked for the door, determined to do something more than sit around waiting for opportunity to fall on his head, determined to show Sylar that he wasn't the only half with initiative. In his near-desperation to get out of the bar, he nearly collided with a woman and a young man, and a distant recall told him that he'd met these people, recognized them. He didn't stop—he knew by now that anyone Sylar had associated with, anything he'd touched was bad news.

He ground to a halt in front of the doors, confronted by the inescapable reflection of Sylar, baring his teeth in caged starvation. Before he could help it he was sucked in, shoved under like a swimmer grabbed by a thrashing drowning person. He felt Sylar roar to life within him, blazing up like a fire at the slightest touch of oxygen, driving mercilessly against his paper-thin protections. He gasped at the attack, falling against the bar, fighting to keep control. People asked him if he was all right, bending solicitously over him, but he heard their voices as if from a long distance off, blurred by static, unimportant to his struggle. It was a losing battle—Sylar had had enough of being locked up. With one final push, he punched through Gabriel's willpower and snatched the reins away, shoving him back from control.

He tried his hands, with the careful testing movements of a puppeteer. They moved at his command, sweeping glasses off the bar to shatter into glittering knives, splashing their contents on the thirsty wooden floor. He looked into their fragments, dazzling under the strobe light like cut diamonds, and saw Gabriel in their surfaces, reflection scattered over a hundred jagged pieces. He gazed down at his exorcised better half, his conscience captured in the pieces of glass, and he laughed.

Sylar was back.


	39. Chapter 39

_You are the brick/  
I am so unpredictable/  
Led by the current away/  
Your solid stage is so necessary to save/  
All those who stray/  
_

Peter was in the White House. He could tell because he'd taken the tour several times while in grade school, as every kid who lived within two hundred miles inevitably did. It was quieter than he remembered, with a solemn, sterile stillness bleached by acid-wash white light. There was a man standing next to him, slightly scruffy-looking and vaguely familiar, glowering in an unpleasant way that Peter found oddly significant. He watched as a perky blond tour guide tapped him on the shoulder, saying, "We're heading outside now, Mr. Sprague."

He waved her away with a brittle smile, insisting that he wanted to look at the paintings a little longer, and she left him alone. The man—Sprague—began to move forward, and Peter felt vaguely, fuzzily, as if he should stop him, but he couldn't seem to move. A door swung open in front of him, and Peter could tell by the slope of the walls that it was the Oval Office. They hadn't been allowed in here in the tours—the President was off-limits to fifth-graders. He recognized it anyway, from movies and from the President in it, sitting on his desk with a pencil behind his ear.

Sprague strode toward the room with a quick-paced, fanatic purpose, and Peter felt the sense of disaster push against him, pulsing his veins to a frenzy, but still he could do nothing. As Sprague entered the office, people seemed to finally notice him, first with puzzlement and then with alarm as they saw the look in his eye and the direction he was heading. Too late—his bones were glowing orange through his skin, and he'd grabbed onto the President before the Secret Service could reach him. He sent them slamming back with waves of radiation, screaming something that Peter couldn't understand, mad-eyed and bursting with destruction.

Peter watched in horror as radiation began to melt their flesh away, charring them to skeletons and then to ash, blasting and splintering through the walls until they collapsed in and everything was toxic-hot and flaming, falling, red-hot-white-orange Nagasaki Los Alamos Hiroshima death death death—

Peter woke up screaming, tumbling Claire off the couch, yelling with enough raw terror to shred his voice to pieces. She scrambled to her knees and grabbed him by the wrists, hanging on grimly as he shuddered through the last of nightmare earthquake-convulsions.

"Peter!" she shouted, frightened, wondering what could make him scream like this, her uncle who was so suicidally brave. "Peter, what's wrong?"

Nathan came running into the room, yanked out of sleep by the sound of his brother's screams. It had taken him a moment of four-alarm panic to realize that Peter wasn't in his room, but in the library, where he'd fallen asleep the night before. After Jonathan's dramatic exit, Claire had burst into uncontrollable sobs, the kind that she hadn't cried since she killed Thompson. Everyone had been blankly bemused at her tears, none of them able to understand except Peter, who had sat her down on a couch in the library and held her for a long time. It was only when she'd stopped crying that he realized she had fallen asleep, effectively trapping him for the night. He had smiled, shrugged, and settled in to sleep with her snuggling her head against his shoulder, resigned to waking the next day with a dead arm. He certainly hadn't expected to be dragged out of sleep by a screaming nightmare, thrashing like a hooked fish.

Nathan knelt by Claire on the couch, taking Peter's chin his hand and forcing him to look him in the eyes. "Pete," he said, feeling Peter shaking under his hands. "Hey, Peter, calm down, man. Tell me what happened."

Peter jerked out of Nathan's grip, rubbing the cold sweat off his palms. "I'm fine," he said, fighting his breathing down to normal. "It was just a dream."

"Yeah, well, we all know your dreams aren't just dreams," Nathan said. "You'd better tell us what it was about."

"I'll make some hot chocolate," Claire said swiftly, remembering the nights when she'd wake up with nightmares and her dad would calm her with hot drinks and a quiet voice. Nathan and Peter, apparently not familiar with the fatherly tradition, looked at her askance, but she stood her ground. "Come on, come to the kitchen with me. It'll make you feel better, I swear."

The brothers followed her dubiously into the kitchen, where she began whisking around like a fifties housewife, busily brisk, making it appear far more of a production than it was. She set a pot boiling and then sat down on a stool, as close to Peter as she dared in his fragile state. They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the whistle of steam from the pot, carefully monitoring Peter for signs of damage.

Nathan met Claire's eyes over his head and she smiled, surprised at how easy it was after telling herself she'd never smile for him again. They'd finally passed through their state of awkwardness, run the gambit of relationship and had come out of it bloody but still walking. He was not her father, biology be damned—that had been established clearly and comfortably. He had bowed out of the job in favor of his better, the man who'd bandaged her scraped knees and kissed her tears. He'd stopped trying to play father, and now it was time for them to form something new, what they were and what to do about it.

"So tell us," Nathan said.

Peter sighed and ran a hand through his hair, looking down at the fingerprints he was making on the sleek ultramodern kitchen table. "You guys remember Ted Sprague? Nods from both of them, thoughtful from Nathan and vehement from Claire. "I, um…jeez, how do I say this? I think he's going to kill the President."

Claire copped out of responding to his announcement by pulling the heated water off the stove and mixing in packets of hot chocolate that coalesced into powdery clumps on the sides of the mugs. That effectively left Nathan to deal with his spectacular statement, who promptly did the worst thing possible, and burst out laughing.

"Oh thanks," Peter said waspishly. "That's really supportive, Nathan, thanks a lot. You think this is a joke? Every one of my dreams has come true, _every one _of them. Well," he admitted, "all except the exploding one, but who knows how long before that happens, too. My point is, if I dream Nuclear Man blowing up the President, it's going to happen."

"Sorry," Nathan said. "I wasn't laughing at you, Pete—or at least not completely. It's just—_this_," he swept a hand out, encompassing them and their hot chocolate and the world. "Somewhere along the line, we got stuck in some sort of a sci-fi melodrama where you say things like 'I'm going to blow up New York City' and I have to believe you. It's all so ridiculously larger than life."

"Doesn't mean it's not true," Peter said mutinously.

"Well, no, that's the problem. I keep waiting for someone to jump out from behind the backdrop and tell us that this is all a huge joke, but it keeps not happening. How are we supposed to deal with this kind of stuff? Things like this don't happen in real life."

"I'll tell you how we're supposed to deal with it," Peter said, still testy from Nathan's reaction. "We're going to save him, that's how. We don't exactly have a choice."

"Says who?" snapped Nathan. "We didn't get any instruction manual for this hero thing, Peter. Nobody asked me if I wanted to run around saving people, nobody gave me a costume or any papers to sign. I'm not obligated to do _anything_."

"Yikes," Peter said. "Don't tell your voters that, Mr. Served-His-Country-In-Vietnam. Only patriotic for the posters, is that it?"

"Something like that," Nathan said. "I am _not_ about to go haring off to the White House yelling that the sky is falling, okay?"

Peter shook his head, managing to pull together a smile for Claire as she pressed the hot chocolate into his hand. She was wisely staying out of this, choosing to blend into the kitchen and play waitress rather than risk getting slashed open on their focused sarcasm. She wasn't sure whose side she'd take, anyway—she agreed at least partially with both of them, feeling that this was all very ludicrous, but also feeling obligated to do something about it. President Cordova was an extremely popular Commander in Chief, smart enough to appeal to the elite, charming and Kennedyesque enough to appeal to the middle class, and good-looking enough to appeal to Claire's cheerleading squad. Unlike many former Presidents, people would be very upset if he was killed—Dallas and Hiroshima rolled into one.

"You didn't see it," Peter said. "I watched it, Nathan, I _watched_ him blow up the whole damn White House! If you're going to hide in your shell, fine, but I'm going to do something about it." He stood up, apparently planning to go charging off at two in the morning and burst into the Oval Office with the news.

Nathan grabbed his arm with such violence that hot chocolate sloshed over Peter's hand, dragging him back. "Oh, no you don't," he said grimly. "You're not stepping a foot outside this house, Peter."

Peter went white with fury, trying to pull out of Nathan's grip. "_What?_"

"In case you've forgotten," Nathan said icily, "your picture is on CNN every fifteen minutes—you can't just go waltzing out of here. Besides which, there is a very unstable ticking time bomb somewhere in this city, and if you come within fifty feet of him, we are all _dead._"

"So, what, I'm _grounded?_" Peter spat, finally jerking his arm away. "Newsflash, Nathan—_you can't stop me_." He began to go transparent from his fingers, melting into the background fast enough to make them dizzy.

But Nathan was a realist—he'd lived for thirty-five years without these abilities, and he planned to do without them for the rest of his life as well. He stepped forward quickly and punched Peter in the jaw, sending him crumpling to the linoleum. "Yes, I can," he said.


	40. Chapter 40

_You are the brick/  
I am so unpredictable/  
Led by the current away/  
Your solid stage is so necessary to save/  
All those who stray/ _

Jonathan felt Candice's hand tighten on his upper arm, tensing in like a blood-pressure bandage. He turned to scold her for hurting him, but when he saw the expression of flat shock on her face, he stopped his smart remark and immediately began looking for the problem.

"Jonathan," she said, almost whispering. "It's Sylar."

He felt his pulse kick up a few notches at the name, and he caught sight of their erstwhile captive just as he collided with them, stumbling against the bar. Powerful murderer or not, there was something wrong with this man. He looked like he was sick, or was having a seizure, only half in control of his body. They watched him for a moment, transfixed at the sight of him bent in on himself, gripping the bar like it was a cliff edge he was just barely hanging onto. Then he straightened, snapping up to his full height with a look that told Jonathan they should have run when they could.

He swept the bar of its drinks, sending the jewel-tone alcohol splattering over Jonathan's feet, and he jumped back with enough startled motion to catch Sylar's eye. He felt the man's gaze scrape over them like sandpaper, and the brief flick of recognition that passed over his face looked like death threat and looked like warning. He felt Candice's hand suddenly release his arm, and when he turned around, she was gone—turned resourcefully invisible, blended with the anonymous crowd.

He swore under his breath and turned back to face Sylar as the man advanced on him with the slow dramatic steps of a B-movie slasher killer. People were scattering around him, fleeing right and left from the sixth-sense surety that someone was going to die here. He called electricity into his hands, regardless of the few people who were still around, reasoning that they wouldn't notice him lighting up like a Christmas tree against their desperation to get away. He felt the lick of sparks against his palms, saw Sylar's eyes go predator-black, and did the first thing he could think of—he thrust his hand into the pool of spilled alcohol on the bar, watching as it ate hungrily across the space to Sylar, hoping no one else was standing in the liquid as he watched Sylar twitch and jerk, hundreds of volts tearing through his body.

_And they said I didn't pay attention in science class_. He watched as Sylar's shoes began to smoke and melt, surprised at his success, amazed that it was that easy—but of course, it wasn't.

He saw Sylar's hands come up with teeth-gritted sheer force of will, and only had time to think what bad trouble he was in before he felt something _push_ into him with enough force to throw him back into the tables. When his vision swam back into focus, Sylar was standing over him (how was he still walking? This man was indestructible!) grabbing him by the collar and dragging him up.

Shaking the last of the dizziness from his head, he grabbed Sylar's arms, hanging on with fierce determination as angry sparks shot into the man's skin. Sylar yelled in pain and shoved him away, third-degree electrical burns braceleting his wrists. Jonathan scrambled to his feet and sprinted for the door, but only made it half a dozen steps before slamming to a paralyzed, telekinetically-frozen halt.

He screamed in frustration, willing himself to movie, but Sylar's invisible grip crushed in on him like iron bands. His arms snapped behind his back and he saw the plastic siding start to tear from the wall in strips, flying over in frightening animation to bind his hands. Sylar, always a quick learner, had deduced that the electrical currents were controlled by his hands, and had effectively blocked them with non-conductive plastic—apparently, Jonathan wasn't the only one who had read his science book.

He strode forward and grabbed Jonathan by the throat, slamming him flat on the tabletop, wincing only slightly as his blistered skin screamed protest. Jonathan's vision tunneled in to nothing but Sylar, his toxic obsession and sharp-lined face. Then suddenly, something seemed to break through those lines, rippling and skewing them. He felt the pressure release on his neck, but the hand didn't move away, and he stayed perfectly still as he watched Sylar's expression rip violently through a dozen extremes.

"Stop that!" he snarled, and Jonathan wondered hysterically who he was talking to. "Get back, this needs to happen!"

"No," he spoke again in a different tone, sounding as if the words came through molasses, forced and sticky. "I won't let you."

"You're so _weak_," he said, jerking his head to the side, and Jonathan began to get a sense of two different personalities, a violent split schizophrenia in conflict. "You're nothing but a parasite, an unfortunate bloodsucking distraction. I am a necessary—extension—of—the—species."

"You're a murderer," said the second voice. "I won't let you get more blood on our hands, they're my hands too."

"You're nobody, and I am _important,_" the first voice snapped. "Do you want to disappear? Do you want to be a nobody, watchmaker?" But the voice was weakening, restrained and pushed under, and the fingers were slowly unwrapping from Jonathan's throat. Finally, the tension went out of his hand and he let Jonathan up, stumbling away to collapse on the nearest chair.

Jonathan got warily to his feet, and when the man looked at him, it was a different face, with cleaner lines and more light behind his eyes. "Sorry about that," he said.

---

"So let me get this straight," Angela said calmly. "You knocked my son out, tied him up, and locked him in his bedroom?"

"I'm your son too, Ma, in case you've forgotten," Nathan said irritably. "And yes, yes I did. You know it's for his own good, he's such an idiot about this saving the world thing."

The rest of the people in the library—Mr. Bennet, Claude, and Angela—shook their heads at him in near-perfect unison, agreeing with him even as they wanted to disapprove. "How long do you think you're going to be able to hold him?" Claude asked practically. "He's a good deal more powerful than even he knows, and he's going to be _pissed_ when he wakes up."

"I don't know," Nathan said wearily, wondering why it was that the person with the greatest amount of power was coincidentally the person with the least common sense—someone clearly hadn't thought that one through. "I'm hoping that I can get someone to talk sense into him before he blows up the house or something. Mom, how about it?"

"What makes you think he's in the wrong, here?" Angela said icily. "Apparently, the President is in danger. Are we honestly going to let him be assassinated without batting an eye?"

"We have two separate problems," Mr. Bennet said analytically. "The President is only one of them. Clearly, we do need to take action to prevent a potential national disaster, but at this moment I'm rather more concerned about Peter rendering New York City a smoking crater."

"Wrong," Claude said, taking Angela's hand for support. "We haven't got two problems, we've got three. Remember our little Benedict Arnold incident? Somewhere in this city there's a maladjusted, angry adolescent running around with an exact knowledge of who and where we are. How long do you think it will be before we've got Mr. Linderman knocking on our door?"

"I hate to up the tally here," Nathan said, "but we might want to think about a fourth problem as well. The police are very actively looking for Peter, and they're going to come looking here. The only reason they haven't shown up yet is because they think I'm still gone, but I'm betting they'll be here with their badges and flashlights in a matter of days. How am I supposed to hide him from them, and what am I supposed to say when they ask where he is?" He stopped short, staring at his mother, who had taken out a notebook and was writing into it. "Mom, what are you doing?"

"Taking notes," she said calmly. Seeing their stunned looks, she said, "What, do you want to wake up two weeks from now and think, oh, we forgot to save the President, I guess he's dead? The only way we'll keep all this straight is if someone writes it down." They continued staring at her, bewildered by the normality of pen and paper in the midst of their world crises. She huffed to herself, said something that sounded like "Men!" and kept writing.

"Can't you deal with the President thing?" Claude asked Nathan. "I mean, you're meant to be the one with all the political connections, aren't you? Not that I care, personally—he's not _my_ President."

Mr. Bennet chose to ignore the last, and said reasonably, "It's true that we should probably split this up somehow—it's all simply too much crisis for any one of us. Nathan, I agree that you should warn the President—you don't have to tell him the whole story, just warn him that he's being targeted and give him as many specifics as you can. Angela, could you try to get your son to see our point of view? We can't have him out of this house, it's irresponsible. Katie will need to be under house arrest as well, though I daresay she'll be less trouble—she's got a slightly tighter grip on reality.

I'll get in touch with Hana, and see if we can find our runaway backstabber before he does too much damage. Claude, I need you to help with the police—there's a great deal of evidence that Peter's in the house, and I remember you being able to make things invisible at a certain proximity. Move all evidence to Peter's room, and when the police do show up I'd like you to get to that room and mask Peter's presence completely. Also, if Angela is successful in talking Peter down to earth, it's vitally important that you continue your training with him."

They all looked at him with cold understanding—except for Angela, who was busy jotting his orders down in her notebook. He felt a small tinge of satisfaction at their capability and comprehension, remembering days and years surrounded by inflexible idiots.

It was so nice working with professionals.

---

Katie and Claire sat silently side-by-side on the stairs, watching the heavy oak door, trying to squash the urge to peer through the keyhole or listen with a glass against the wood. "And we're at the kid's table again," Katie said quietly, glaring from under her bangs.

"What?" Claire asked absently.

"Nothing," Katie told her. "It's just something Peter said once."

"So what are we going to do?" Claire asked matter-of-factly.

"Do?" Katie asked, surprised enough to tear her gaze away from the door. "I think it's been make pretty clear that _we're_ not going to do anything. That's what the talking heads in there are for."

"We could let him free."

"Bad idea, believe me."

"Why is it a bad idea? He just wants to save the world."

"I know, and that's really cute of him and all, but unfortunately there's a good chance he'll blow it up in the process. It's just not a smart thing to do right now."

"So what? If Peter had always done the _smart_ thing, if he always listened to his brother, I would be dead right now. I trust his instincts. Out of all of us, I think that he was just…_meant_ for this somehow."

"Like fate, you mean?" Katie asked thoughtfully.

"Yeah," Claire agreed. "Like fate."

"Well," Katie said slowly. "If this is all fate, I suppose we couldn't be blamed if we were _fated_ to let him go. It's our destiny, right?"

"Absolutely," Claire said solemnly. "We wouldn't want to cause a…er, a rift in the…fate continuum."

"Okay," Katie relented. "Let's go find Peter."


	41. Chapter 41

AUTHOR'S NOTE: 200 reviews, hooray! And about 10 short of 200 pages—that has to mean something, or at least it's a cool coincidence. Anyway, thank you to everyone—your reviews make my day, you gorgeous, fantastic readers. They just make me want to…write you a haiku.

Reviews are lovely

Make want to jump and sing

Thank you everyone

Right, that sucked. But it's the thought that counts, yeah? All right, on to the story, you don't really want to hear me talk, or attempt horrible poetry.

_You painted me in pastel/  
Colors that don't tell of any boldness/  
That's the way you'd love to see me/  
So delicate, so weak, so little purpose/_

When Claire opened the door and saw Peter, sitting up against the wall with his hands hidden, tied behind his back, she felt as if her heart might break into pieces. She wasn't sure she wanted to be part of this family, where there were as many layers of deception as levels of Hell and people attacked each other on a regular basis. She hurried to him and Katie knelt on the floor beside her, shaking him gently, trying to get him to open his eyes so they could escape like cat burglars out into the city. His eyelashes fluttered open and he looked at her with mild surprise, confused and angry and struggling out of her grip.

"Why am I tied up?" he asked flatly.

"Oh," Katie explained helplessly. "Nathan thought you might run off."

"Damned right I'm going to run off, get me loose, Claire!"

"Calm down," she said soothingly. "That's what we came here for, but I'm not letting you free unless you promise to take me with you."

"What?" Katie said. "_That_ wasn't part of the plan."

"Wasn't part of my plan, either," Peter agreed. "You're staying here where you're safe, Claire."

"Sorry," she said breezily. "I'm going with you. Isn't that what we do? Run off on crazy dangerous missions without telling anyone where we're going? We've got this whole Batman-and-Robin relationship going on, Peter, don't screw it up. Besides," she pointed out logically, "so far I'm the only one who's been able to get near Ted when he's going nuclear—what was _your_ plan for stopping him, Mr. New-York-Apocalypse? You don't even know what he _looks_ like."

"Good point," Peter admitted. "All right, get me out of here and I'll think about it."

"Right," Katie said, sounding wistful. "I'll just stay here and face the music for your prison break, shall I? Have fun in Washington, be sure to pack a raincoat."

"Oh, stop whining," Peter said good-naturedly as Claire untied his wrists. "You can come with us, of course. The more the merrier, right? They can have a big triple funeral for us after we get ourselves killed."

"Don't be morbid," she scolded lightly. "And I wasn't kidding about that raincoat, it's pretty wet this time of year. Go pack, and for God's sake, _be quiet_."

---

Candice: Hi there. I'm surprised to hear from you, I thought you were dead.

Jonathan: You would, wouldn't you, after the way you completely ditched me? No heroes among thieves, right?

Candice: I never said I was a hero. So are you still walking, or what?

Jonathan: Yeah, I've still got all my limbs, though it was close there for a minute.

Candice: I should be so lucky. Want to tell me what happened?

Jonathan: Oh, you know—blood, death, schizophrenia, the usual. The funny part is, looks like our friend Sylar has picked up an extra personality, from killing Niki Sanders and all. He's actually a nice guy, when he's not a raging killer.

Candice: You're right, that's absolutely hilarious.

--dead air--

Jonathan: You know I hate you, right?

Candice: Yeah, I'm pretty okay with that.

Jonathan: Just so you know. Anyway, I'm sick of standing here on the side of the road like a particularly attractive sort of homeless person. Tell me where you are and I'll come stalk you.

Candice: I'm a few blocks away, at the Marriot on the corner. Bring your pet serial killer, unless he turns into Sylar again, in which case you're probably screwed.

Jonathan: I guess you'd know all about that, wouldn't you? I'll be there. Don't wait up for me.

Mr. Bennet read over the phonecall transcript Hana had sent him for a third time, carefully highlighting the parts that could be useful. Most of it was snarky back-and-forth between two vastly unhappy people seeking an outlet for their frustration, but there were some specific location clues that he was definitely going to highlight. He was pleased to finally be turning the tables back to their proper positions, with him holding the gun instead of standing between the crosshairs. He couldn't wait to get out and run them to the ground, these people that had hurt him and hurt Claire, playing with their hands and their hearts and their heads, thinking that they were in control and that nothing could ever change.

They were about to find out how very wrong they were, and he hoped he could be the one looking in their eyes as they bled their surprise out and died. He wasn't a sadistic man, but he was currently a very angry one, and he imagined that killing them would feel very good.

---

Angela treaded the hallway quietly, noticing as always that they kept this floor oddly dark. They didn't often use it, not since Peter had moved out, and the absence of his smiles and buoyancy had so seemed to darken the house that she hadn't even noticed the literal dimness for some time. Now, though, it was cloying and claustrophobic, so reminiscent of some gloomy cave that she half-expected the roof to start growing stalactites.

She wondered what she could possibly say to Peter; "Hi honey, I'm sorry your brother knocked you out and tied you up, you know how he is"? Her family was so unnatural in the twists and turns of its relationships—there wasn't a single parenting book that made sense in the context of her nuclear-emo-nurse younger son and her unethical-flying-Congressman older one. Perhaps, she thought, she should write her own book: _Mobsters, Murder, and Other Family Issues. _

She opened the door to Peter's room and stuck her head in, looking around in the darkness for her son. She looked for some time, standing awkwardly part of the way in the room, legs and torso sticking out into the hall. Then, she pulled her head out of the room, calmly shut the door, and stood with her arms folded under the moody half-light.

She wondered what Nathan would say if she told him Peter was gone.

---

Jonathan didn't even bother to knock, tossing the door open and walking into Candice's suite with the careless arrogance of a king or a teenager. Candice looked up from her magazine with a slow, annoyed glare, taking in the sight of him and the man behind him, still as a painting and dripping all over the carpet. "Haven't you ever heard of _knocking?_" she said, as condescendingly as she could. "What would you have done if I had been making out with the bellboy on the couch?"

"I don't know," Jonathan said unconcernedly. "Why, is that something you're likely to do?"

"If I get bored enough," she said with all honesty. "He is sort of cute."

"Thanks so much for sharing that," Jonathan said, making a face. "In other, more important news, this is Gabriel Gray. I believe he's on your checklist of runaways, no?"

"Hi, Gabe," she said, and she saw him wince at the abbreviation. "I'm Candice Wilmer. How _are_ you?"

"I've been better," he said shortly, shivering with fear and wet.

"Oh, you two are just _soaking_," Candice said, mock-motherly. "Let's get you out of those clothes." She used her voice to layer implications into her words, letting her eyes linger long enough on Gabriel to make him thoroughly uncomfortable. Then she broke focus, jerking her head toward the phone on the table. "Call room service, they'll get you something to wear." Then she walked over to Jonathan, pulling him to the side so they could talk. "Forget the bellboy," she said softly. "He's sexy as hell."

Jonathan rolled his eyes. "And completely evil half the time," he reminded her. "Then again, that makes you a good match, doesn't it?"

"He _is_ on Mr. Linderman's Extremely-Dangerous-Shoot-to-Kill list," Candice mused. "I guess that rules out any casual relations, doesn't it?"

"More than somewhat," Jonathan said, rubbing his hair dry with a towel so that it stood up at incredible, gravity-defying angles. "So what are we going to do with him?"

"This," said Candice, and she pulled a gun out of her jacket, took aim, and shot Gabriel in the head.

---


	42. Chapter 42

_Who shot that arrow in your throat?/  
Who missed the crimson apple?/  
And there is discord in the garden tonight/_

"So what are we going to do with him?"

"This," said Candice, and she pulled a gun out of her jacket, took aim, and shot Gabriel in the head.

"_Damn it_!" Jonathan yelled as Gabriel dropped soundlessly, "Damn it, Candice, why'd you do that?"

She looked at him, nonplussed. "What part of 'shoot to kill' didn't you understand?"

Jonathan glared at her and crossed the room, jumping the couch to get to Gabriel's unmoving form. To his shock, just as he reached the man, he began to stir, sitting up with a hand pressed against the side of his head. When he took it away, Jonathan saw a deep indentation in his skin, a circular mark that began to fade as he watched. "What—" Jonathan gaped, aware that he looked like a landed fish but unable to quite get his mouth closed. "How—"

Gabriel himself seemed surprised, running his fingers over the place the bullet had hit. "Ow," he said plaintively. Then, as the full effects of the shot came pounding home, feeling like they would split his head open with their white-hot spears, he yelled "_Ow!_" He bent over his knees, the pain smashing down on him like a literal weight at the base of his spine.

"Odd," Candice said unrepentantly. "Usually when I shoot people, they…you know, _die._"

"Ow," Gabriel said, words muffled by his knees.

"Yeah, that seems to be the done thing," Jonathan said, puzzled. "Maybe he's eaten Claire and we don't know it yet?"

"No," Candice mused, watching Gabriel hold his head like it was going to fall off. "He seems to be in quite a bit of pain—just not dead."

Jonathan picked the bullet up from where it had fallen on the floor, rolling it around in his fingers. "So, we're thinking some kind of lesser invulnerability power? Now that I think about it, I pretty much electrocuted him to a crisp at that bar, and he just kept coming. Maybe some kind of thick skin thing?"

Candice walked over, gazing down at Gabriel like he was a bug pinned to a board. "Yeah, maybe," she said interestedly. "Well, there's nothing for it, I guess." She brought her gun down on the back of his head, and he slumped sideways on the floor, unconscious. "I think we'd better call Mr. Linderman."

---

"So," Katie said brightly, "do we have a plan?"

"Katie," Peter said patiently, as if speaking to a particularly slow student. "Katie, darling, you're new to all this, so your ignorance is understandable. Of _course_ we don't have a plan."

"Basically, we just do whatever seems like a good idea at the time, and hope we don't get killed," Claire said helpfully, watching out the window at their surroundings, passing so quickly that they blended together, trees into buildings into telephone poles. The whir and click of the train's wheels beat lightly against their consciousnesses, a soothing staccato rhythm like the backbeat of a song. It made them calmer than they had been in the moments of their headlong flight, more level and reasonable, more likely to succeed.

"Well, I've heard how well that worked in the past," Katie grinned, "and besides, this is a little different."

"How so?" Peter said indignantly. "Bad guys are bad guys, aren't they?"

Katie shook her head. "Oh, Peter," she said, somehow sounding affectionate without being condescending. "You've read too many comic books. Things are never that easy."

"I don't see why not," Peter said, comfortable in his worldview. "There's good and there's evil, and I know they exist, I've seen them."

"You don't think there might be some middle ground?" Claire said wistfully, and Peter knew she was thinking of Jonathan, could tell by the drawstring pucker of her brow and the way she fidgeting with the hem of her shirt. He wasn't sure how he felt about that—he still couldn't bring himself to hate the kid, not after it all, but then he'd been told that he was far too forgiving. He thought he might be able to forgive Jonathan, if only he would stay away from Claire—he could trust Jonathan with his feelings and his forgiveness, but not hers. Not the new teenage experiences of his niece who was still so innocent despite what she might think, still barely bursting out of childhood with a vision that was very tinted with rose.

"There's always middle ground," he said gently. "Just don't step on it, it usually gives."

"What I'm saying," Katie continued, oblivious of their Hallmark moment, "is that we really can't be winging it, not with this one. With Ted Sprague in the equation, we've got to be absolutely precise—we're dealing with inches and seconds now, not instincts and treasure hunts. Somehow, we've got to figure out how to stop him without ever getting you near him, or we'll all be blown to smithereens."

"Why just me?" Peter protested. "You're an empath, too, you're just as likely to go H-bomb."

"No I'm not," she said composedly. "I have much better control than you."

His hands tensed in his lap, and he wanted very much to say something about the afternoon in Las Vegas when all their lives had been thrown up in the air for target practice, and all she could do was kneel on the floor and scream. But it wasn't in his nature to be cruel, so he said, "In some things, maybe," careful to keep his voice neutral.

"Well, I'm better at incorporating and controlling new abilities," she allowed, "and that's what matters here."

"This whole empath thing seems awfully inconvenient," Claire said, getting up to make sure their compartment door was shut—she realized that to a casual listener, their talk of bombs and superpowers might not seem just crazy, but actually dangerous. "There has to be a way of blocking these powers out—I mean, what if you come up against a power that you don't want?"

"Like the power to explode the world?" Peter said wryly. "I don't know. I _wish_ there was a way of blocking them."

"Perhaps we just need to try harder," Katie suggested, half-serious, stretching her long legs out on the seat.

"Right," Peter said. "Everyone close their eyes and clap their hands real hard, and maybe Tinkerbell won't die."

"Shut up," Katie said, kicking him across the space between their seats. "You know what I mean."

He grinned at her, and she grinned back, and suddenly they were completely caught up in grinning at each other, only vaguely aware that they looked like idiots and suddenly finding it very important not to move or breathe or do anything to break the moment.

In the end, they didn't have to. "Oh, would you two just make out in public, already!" Claire said exasperatedly. "Enough with the forbidden love thing, it's obvious you both want it!"

Peter and Katie leapt away from each other like polar magnets, blushing furiously up the backs of their necks and into their cheeks. "I—um, I'm going to take a walk," Katie said, fumbling with the door.

"Don't forget to shift," Claire reminded sweetly, and Katie swiftly blurred into form of the Hispanic woman that was on her passport before disappearing like a magic trick, embarrassed and afraid.

Once she was gone, Peter turned to Claire and punched her in the arm. "Claire! What'd you say that for?"

"I'm sorry," she said contritely. "It sort of just jumped out, but it _is _the truth. I'm tired of watching you two stare at each other and never do anything else. What happened to the guy who stole someone else's girlfriend because he loved her?"

"That guy is currently in exile," he told her darkly, "because, if you'll remember, he's also the guy who got her shot."

She gave him a swift, tight hug. "I know you're still hurting from what happened with Simone," she said, "but you can't let it ruin the rest of your life, you know? There's a beautiful girl here who likes you and think you're fantastic, and you're both just being bloody-minded by staying apart."

He pushed his hair out of his face, sighing with the heaviness of stubborn sacrifice. "Yeah, maybe," he said unconvincingly.

She hugged him again, wrapping her arms around his neck. "You can be a hero without being a tragic hero, you know," she told him.

"Yeah," he said, "maybe."

---

Mr. Bennet sat behind the table with a map spread over one side and a phonebook on the other, red pen in hand. He'd circled all the Marriot hotels in slashing red marks, and was narrowing the possibilities by deciding which of them could be considered 'on the corner'. He was close—he wanted to leap out of his seat and chase them down, like a foxhound with the scent of game.

Nathan banged in on his hunt, throwing the door open without a knock. "They've done it again," he announced hotly.

"What are you talking about?" Mr. Bennet asked, looking up from his map.

"They've run off again," Nathan half-explained. "I swear, I'm going to put a leash on that brother of mine, either that or a shock collar."

Mr. Bennet's heart leapt up his ribcage in rapid, uneven beats that said _ClaireClaireClaireClaire_, but he managed to keep his voice relatively level as he said, "So what do you plan to do about it?"

Nathan looked at him like he'd proposed they learn to ballroom dance. "Go after them," he said, in the tone of someone trying hard not to add 'of course'. "Come on, let's go."

"I'm not going with you," Mr. Bennet said, feeling every word like a separate boulder falling on him, walling him into an airless hermit's cave.

"What?" Nathan asked, stunned.

"I'm not going with you," Mr. Bennet repeated. "As much as it kills me and as hard as it is for me to even stay in this chair, I'm not going to be that kind of father. She's sixteen years old, and if I keep her on a _leash,_" Nathan flinched at the choice of words, as Mr. Bennet had meant him to, "if I keep dragging her back to me, she's not going to thank me for it. It's time I showed her a little trust. If she asks for my help, I'll be there in an instant, but I think she's earned the right to be treated like an adult."

Nathan's eyes shot venomous angry sparks, chafing under the implied criticism. High-minded lectures on family dynamics or not, Nathan knew better than to let Peter go off on his own. "Fine," he spat. "Suit yourself. I guess I'll see you when I get back." He stalked out of the room, then turned for a last parting shot. "That is, if the world hasn't blown up by then." He slammed the door.


	43. Chapter 43

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I am SO SORRY about the delays!!!! For the past week or so, the site's been wigging on me pretty badly, not letting me upload my documents AT ALL. I was going fairly mad, but it seems to be fixed now, thank God. On the upside of it all, I've got a few chapters stocked up, so you get 'em all at once, hooray! Thanks for hanging with me, and I hope everything works this time :)

_All we need is a little bit of momentum/  
Break down these walls that we've built around ourselves/  
All we need is a little bit of inertia/  
Breakdown and tell, breakdown and tell/_

Peter saw a man standing in the center of the room, like the eye of a storm that had yet to start. He saw bones glowing like Halloween novelties, straight through muscle and skin with intense lantern light. He saw the curve of the Oval Office, and the pencil behind the President's ear, the small-but-expanding mushroom cloud that ate up wood and metal and flesh and kept going, burning against the backs of his eyelids until the heat was too much to stand and he was on fire with the rest of it, burning to ash—

Peter woke up screaming in a lurch of forward motion that was becoming all too familiar, with the taste of residual terror in his mouth. He bit his fist to keep from crying out again, not wanting to wake Katie or Claire, who were sleeping serenely on either side. He bent over his knees, trying not to shake and trying not to think about the things that had made him scream. He wondered if it would be like this the rest of his life, the dreams of the world ending and the obligation to save it. He heard Claire's voice in his head: _What if you there's a power that you don't want?_

He rubbed his hand across the back of his mouth, trying to rid himself of the taste of nightmare, and watched Katie sleeping on the floor beside him, her slow steady rise-and-fall of breath soothing him back to normalcy. The suite they were staying in had three rooms, but after a few fretful minutes of monsters-in-the-shadows aloneness, they had all piled into one room, dragging mattresses in to sleep beside each other. He looked down at her with shameless admiration, following the curve of her cheekbone down to the hollow of her neck, taking advantage of the only time he could look at her without hiding or sneaking sidelong glances.

She looked like some enchanted fairytale princess, haloed by shimmering witchspell and waiting for someone to kiss her lips, and oh, Peter wanted to be the prince who woke her. But he couldn't shake the way that her dark curling hair reminded him of another girl he had unspelled, the way his mind twisted her to look like the first girl he'd said 'I love you' to and the first girl he'd killed. He couldn't push her picture out of mind and he couldn't stop himself from flinching ever so slightly every time Katie touched him, or from wishing she'd touch him no matter how hard it made him flinch. He felt like he was poking at a sore tooth, tightening his hand around a knife just to know that he was alive from the pain that it brought and the way his blood ran out like red liquid satin.

Without warning, he saw her eyes abruptly flutter open, drawn up from sleep perhaps by his gaze, or the feeling that something was amiss. Suddenly she was no longer a spun-sugar sleeping princess but something very alive, a thousand times brighter and more animate by virtue of her dragon-green eyes, a thousand times more beautiful, lit to the level of a work of art. He felt her beauty catch in his throat like the sight of a miracle, unfolding like a morning glory as she rose from the ground, dark glossy hair sheeting around her in appealing waterfall tangles.

Before he knew what he was doing he was sliding his hands behind her neck and pulling her in, moving slow and silent like they were underwater but with a terrible urgency. She seemed to understand what drove him and her mouth met his with acceptance and a burning building pressure of her own, cool against his skin and tasting of cinnamon. He pulled her closer, suddenly finding it very important for them to be touching more than they were, and she leaned into him so that her hair fell around them and he couldn't see past her but he didn't care.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Claire sit up from her mattress and look straight at them, and he reacted like he'd been set on fire, scrambling to get untangled from Katie before he scarred his niece for life. Released and hastily pushed away from him, Katie fell off the bed with a bit-off scream and landed in an unattractive heap on the floor. Claire looked at them blearily, yawning with the last vestiges of sleep.

"What?" she said blankly, seeing their edged awkward expressions. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," Katie assured her hurriedly from the floor. "Nothing, everything's fine, Claire. Go back to bed."

"I heard noises," she said suspiciously

"Noises?" Peter said, airily innocent. "I didn't hear any noises, did you, Katie?"

"Nope," she agreed. "No noises whatsoever."

"Definitely not," Peter said, slightly drunk on pheromones and beginning to wonder if he was making any sense at all. "You must have been, um, dreaming."

"About noises," Katie finished lamely.

Claire looked at them like she was having deep misgivings about their sanity. "Right," she said, in the tone of humoring a person who was clearly out of their head. "I'm going back to sleep." She laid back down and turned to face the wall, apparently planning to ignore them until they made more sense.

That left Peter with Katie, who wouldn't look at him, and his memories, which were worse.

---

Claude didn't sleep well in strange houses—he was beginning to get used to this one, slowly but steadily, the feel of the beds and the sounds of the city outside, but he doubted he would ever feel truly safe. There was a deep-rooted twitchiness in him now, a mistrustful paranoia that turned every night noise into a murderer or a memory, and it came home to him most at nighttime, when the sounds were more startling compared to the silence. He'd managed to shake the fear partially in his years apart from The Company, but he'd honed himself to the Devaux building and now he was somewhere else, and he just couldn't lay still without wanting to turn invisible.

He was accustomed to three or four hours of sleep, to wandering places that turned graveyard in the dark. However, he was surprised to find Angela up, standing at the library window, staring out at what stars could be seen through the strident city lights. He came up behind her and put an arm around her shoulder, careful not to startle her out of whatever reverie had kept her there.

"This house is empty so often," she said absently, barely seeming to notice him. "We should have gotten a smaller house, those seem less drained when there's no one in them."

"Ah, so I'm no one, is that it?" he teased gently, pulling her away from the window and the thoughts of her sons that he could see her thinking like a neon marquee over her head.

"Of course not," she said, finally responding to him, slipping her hand down to his. "I meant my family. David was away so often, and Peter and Nathan have always taken after him, in their separate ways. We don't like to stay still, is what it is, we feel like we need to keep running faster and faster, but sometimes I wonder where we're running to, and how we'll know when we get there. I wonder if maybe we'll wake up one day and realize that we've been running so fast that we've missed the things we thought were important, as well as the things that really were." She smiled wryly at him, seeming to come out of her trance. "I'm sorry. I'm being awfully depressing, aren't I?"

"Not at all," he assured her with a grin. "I like your realism, I've told you that."

There was a pause, and then she said. "Do you think Peter's going to die?"

He had a second of better judgment, a small voice screaming something unintelligible about tact and white lies, but he'd never been any good at discretion, and his answer was out before he could dilute it. "Probably," he said.


	44. Chapter 44

_I moved in the dark/  
The room calm and cold/  
The quiet hollow/  
I am such a haunted soul/_

Peter wouldn't have thought he could get back to sleep after his hypercharged accidental midnight liaison, but he did. Not that he was asleep for long.

It wasn't the same nightmare that woke him for the second time, but it was a familiar one. The empty city, the eerie click of the bike wheel, the cars that stretched for miles in gridlock. He was nearly used to the unreal, drugged slow-motion-and-silence of the dream, but as always, just as he was getting comfortable with something, it had to be turned on its head. Spliced in with the familiar washed-out images of New York were clips of Katie, shots of him and her kneeling on the pavement with power flickering around them like a rabid electrical storm. Sandwiched between the calm and empty city were these new, unnerving images, Katie holding onto him like he was about to fall or die, screaming something that was distorted by the fabric of the dream, sounding like someone speaking underwater.

"Shield, Peter!" she seemed to be saying, as near as he could figure out, only that didn't make any sense, did it? "_Shield!"_

But it was too late to try to interpret mysterious warnings, anyway, because heat and radiation were splashing out from them, rolling in waves like thunder, warping and twisting cars around them, hollowing out a radius of destruction that grew with ever second and showed no signs of stopping—

By now, Peter Petrelli was a pro at nightmares, and he managed to swallow his scream just as it threatened to burst out, determined not to wake Claire and Katie. This turned out to be a misplaced worry, however, as his brain kicked into working order and he began to realize that there was sunshine streaming in around the edges of the blinds like a solar eclipse, and the beds beside him were empty.

Claire popped her head into the bedroom, drawn by the noise of him reeling out of nightmare. "Hi Peter!" she said brightly. "I'm glad you're awake, I was just about to resort to pouring water over your head. Come on, Katie and I are making pancakes."

Remembering the last time Claire had attempted pancakes, Peter scrambled from his bed and followed her into the kitchen, where he was relived to find Katie doing the cooking, flipping pancakes with practiced professional flair. "Jeez, Rachel Ray," he said, hoping to slide past post-makeout awkwardness without her noticing. "Where'd you learn to cook? I didn't see any range-top ovens in Linderman's vaults."

"I'm still remembering," she admitted, nodding to a plate of deformed castoff pancakes. "I used to be a really good cook, worked at this ritzy restaurant and everything, but eight years is a long time, you know?"

Claire shoved a stack of plates into Peter's hands. "Set the table, we're almost ready," she commanded in the way that she'd picked up from her father, unassuming but difficult to ignore.

Obediently, he began putting the plates down on the bar, only half paying attention as he replayed his dream in his head. "Katie," he asked, "what does 'shielding' mean to you?"

She raised one delicate Mediterranean eyebrow. "Off the top of my head, I'd have to say it reminds me of Star Trek, but I'll admit I've never been good at word association games. Why?"

"I had another dream," he explained. "New York Apocalypse Version 3.0. You were in it this time."

"Lovely," she said, deftly flipping a pancake. "You'd think we'd be allowed to deal with one crisis at a time, but no, wouldn't want life to be boring, now would we?"

"In this one, me and you were kneeling on the pavement—which of course made perfect sense at the time, you know how dreams are—and you were yelling at me to shield. Frankly, I don't know what to make of it."

Claire came to sit beside him, licking batter off her fingers. "God, you're dense," she said, her smile lightening the words. "Isn't it obvious?"

"No," Katie said. "It is decidedly less than obvious. Care to enlighten us?"

"The _security guard_," she said, as if she'd just unveiled the key to the universe. When they continued to regard her with blank, fish-eyed stares, she elaborated. "Remember, back at The Monticello? Both of you acquired that blond lady's ability to shield? It makes sense that you might be able to contain the blast inside some kind of a shield, yeah? In fact," she said, in the tone of someone who has an invisible lightbulb over their head, "now that I think about it, shielding tightly around _yourselves_ might even be enough to stop unwanted abilities."

Both Peter and Katie were looking at her as if they though she might be a reincarnated Albert Einstein. "You know," Katie said slowly. "That just might work. I mean, we pick up these abilities via people's brainwaves, and technically, these shields can block out _anything—_maybe even brainwaves."

"Sounds good in theory," Peter agreed, reminding Claire suddenly of her eighth-grade science teacher, "but how can we be sure? I'd prefer not to field-test it on Ted the Magic Exploding Man, if it's all the same."

"Easy enough," Claire said assertively. "Peter, shield."

"Shield as tight as you can," Katie advised. "See if you can get it right along your skin."

"Okay," Peter said dubiously, layering shields over himself with a barely-perceptible blue shimmer. "It does feel a little different, I guess."

"Good," Claire said, and without warning, she grabbed his hand and thrust it onto the burner.

He yelled in pain and surprise, jerking away from her. "Ow, Claire! What'd you do that for?"

"Watch," she said, catching his hand again and turning the half-circle burn marks to the light.

"They're not healing," Peter said blankly.

"Exactly!" she said. "That means it works, right?"

"You're a genius, Claire," Katie said, giving her a one-armed hug. "Now take those shields, off, Peter, your burn is grossing me out."

---

Jonathan and Candice knew the instant Sylar reemerged—he made sure they knew, with a heart-stopping primal scream and an ineffective-but-frightening attack on the flimsy hotel door. His flare of rage lasted only a moment, long enough for them to wonder exactly how much they'd bitten off, and whether they could chew it. After the initial attack, he subsided into an equally unnerving silence, a quiet of such thick intensity that they could feel it through the walls like nerve gas, asphyxiating them.

Candice turned back to her phone call with forced calm. "Did you hear that, Mr. Linderman? That's exactly what we have to deal with. I'm okay with guard duty, I really am, but this is like babysitting a ticking time bomb, and I'm pretty sure you're not paying me enough for that. Besides which, he's a horrible inconvenience—I seem to recall you telling me that our priority was Peter, but what with Mr. Gray hanging around like an uncool charity friend, we haven't been able to do much at all. In short, he's cramping our style."

"I hadn't foreseen this possibility," Mr. Linderman said mildly. "It is indeed a conundrum."

"Understatement of the year," Candice said sarcastically. "I know that protocol for something like this is pretty much to shoot him in the head, but guess what, been there and done that with not even a tacky souvenir shirt to show for it."

"No, I wouldn't want you to kill him," Linderman mused. "Not now. This situation has become singularly interesting—I should very like to study it."

Candice took a deep breath and counted to ten, telling herself that yelling at one's superiors was generally considered a bad career move. "Yes, Mr. Linderman," she said, overly sweet and hoping that he could read the screams between her words anyway. "Very interesting. What am I supposed to do about it?"

"Keep him contained," Linderman said authoritatively. "I'll send someone to pick him up. In the interim, I want you and Jonathan to take twelve-hour shifts watching him and watching the Petrellis. Take no overt action until we take Sylar off your hands, but gather as much information as you can."

Candice flicked her eyes to Jonathan as he came out of the kitchen, a bowl of ramen noodles in his hand, which he was inhaling with a rapidity only seen in vacuum cleaners and teenage boys. She looked at him, her partner, her only ally within five hundred miles, and she very nearly gave up altogether. She forced herself to pull out memories of him crackling with the rawest kind of energy, looking like some surreal demi-god with a bright halo of electricity, and she felt better, enough to answer Mr. Linderman. "Will do," she said lightly. "Tell your delivery boys to hurry."

There was a brisk syncopated knock on their door, and she shot it an annoyed glare as if she could make the knocker leave by sheer force of will. "What?" she snapped.

"Room Service," came a male voice, slightly muted by the door.

With a dramatic sigh, she went to open it. Jonathan, who had watched too much TV and too many spy movies, felt the pit of his stomach drop out with a sudden certainty of what would be on the other side of the door. The bowl of noodles fell from his nerveless fingers, and he reached out as if to stop her from opening it, yelling, "Wait, no—"

But it was far too late, whole seconds and decisions too late, and the doorway framed a person who was quite obviously not Room Service. The gunmetal glint in from his hands was a hint, and the I-mean-business stance and the cold-set jaw, but as always, the giveaway was the horn-rimmed glasses.

It was Mr. Bennet.


	45. Chapter 45

_Can't carry myself, can't carry me home/  
Wait for the wind to blow/  
Can't bury myself, can't carry us both/  
On my own will/_

The instant Candice's mind registered Mr. Bennet standing in their doorway, she tried to shut the door on him, but she was only 120 pounds of woman and it was very much a losing battle. He bulled the door open and was into the room before they could react, gun up and shooting with slide-rule accuracy. Jonathan, immobilized by surprise and alarm, had the presence of mind to at least try to jump away from the bullets, but it wasn't enough—he felt metal bite into his knee and he hit the floor, swearing with an enthusiasm that would have made nuns faint.

"Candice!" he yelled, kicking the table over with his good leg, a flimsy barrier against Mr. Bennet's attack. "Candice, give me a _gun!"_

He heard the spatter of quick-fired shots and an angry wildcat scream of rage, but he was far beyond worrying about Candice. It was clear she wasn't going to be giving him any help, so his mind automatically blocked her out, graying her into unimportance until he found a way to get out of this alive. He put his palms flat on the floor and sent electricity pulsing into the floor, lighting the carpet on fire in a clean line to Mr. Bennet. Another yell, the sound of a scuffle, and bullets began raining toward him again, peppering the fragile coffee table with holes.

Between gunshots, Jonathan managed to get a look at the situation, which unfortunately was far worse than he'd suspected—Candice was nowhere to be seen (dead? run off again? who knew?) and Mr. Bennet was loading a weapon that he recognized. The unwieldy long-barreled handgun was designed to fit power-dampening cartridges, filled with the same neurotoxin they used in the collars, a kind of riot weapon Linderman had developed recently to immobilize special abilities. _I'd better not get hit by that_, Jonathan thought, and then promptly became a case study for Murphy's law by getting hit by it. As he ducked back behind the table, he felt one of the skinny silver cartridges punch through his shirt, pumping chemicals insistently into his bloodstream.

"_Damn_," he muttered as he scrabbled to pull it out of his shoulder. "Damn, damn, damn."

He heard a gun cock inches from his ear, a small menacing click that let him know that his life was now officially up for grabs. The chilled metal of a gun muzzle brushed against the short hairs at the back of his neck, and he could feel Mr. Bennet's voice vibrating gently through it. "Come on, Jonathan," he said. "Get your hands where I can see them."

Jonathan brought his hands slowly up like a million cowboy movies, smarting under the turnaround and afraid of the cold clear dislike in Mr. Bennet's eyes. "What are you going to do, Bennet?" he said, quietly taunting, playing chicken with the impossibility of the situation. "Shoot me? Mr. Linderman told me about you, the man with a clockwork mechanism instead of a heart and a five trigger fingers on each hand. I'm sure you won't lose any sleep over me. Just another notch in your gun grip, right?"

The muzzle pressed harder into his neck, no longer a gentle reminder but a painful heavy-handed threat. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't shoot you in the head and walk away," Mr. Bennet said evenly, his voice untouched by conscience or guilt.

"Because Claire would miss me," he said, and he felt the blow almost before it hit, the gun cracking across the back of his head and sending him sprawling. Mr. Bennet's foot pressed down on his chest with enough force to make breathing somewhat of a challenge, and Jonathan felt goosebumps racing up his arms at the expression on the man's face. Now he _was_ remembering the stories Linderman had told him, about this man who had given his soul away for free simply because it was slowing him down, who hugged his daughter with hands he'd just washed blood from. This was no bleeding-heart pristine Good Guy, no matter which side he was on. This man would hurt him, and this man would kill him without a single qualm to mark his passing.

"I suppose," he said breathlessly, "this would be a bad time to say I'm sorry." The boot pressed harder into his chest, and now he _really _couldn't breathe, was choking on his own smart remarks. "Tell Claire—," he gasped, couldn't get it out, tried again. "Tell Claire all about how—you killed me, she'll—," gasp, "love that."

He felt air rush back into his lungs as the foot released, saw as Mr. Bennet aimed a kick at his ribs and managed to catch the foot as it came down, shoving the man off-balance, nearly toppling him. He scrambled up as Mr. Bennet fell into the table, assessing the situation with very little hope. He was cut off from his abilities, barely able to stand on his injured leg, weaponless, and much less experienced than this renowned ex-Company agent. Legend had it that no one had beaten him out of anything he really wanted, not in sixteen years, no one had ever gotten the jump on him without a fatal payback. And what was he? Nothing but an eminently breakable seventeen-year-old traitor. _There was never anything special about me except my ability to create a really spectacular Dixie Chicks concert light show—and now I don't even have that. _

He decided he might as well take his fate into his own hands, make it a suicide instead of a murder, as long as Mr. Bennet was off-guard anyway. He grabbed Mr. Bennet's wrist with both hands and smashed it against the broken tabletop until he lost his grip on the gun, sending it skittering under the couch. Desperately needing the leverage, Jonathan lunged for the weapon, but Mr. Bennet caught him by the collar and threw him bodily into the wall. White starbursts of pain mixed with Jonathan's shock at discovering that beneath Mr. Bennet's dark suits were _muscles_—real, vastly threatening muscles.

"I said I was _sorry_," Jonathan tried, wondering if Mr. Bennet would know how much of the apology was sincere and how much of it was last-ditch pleading.

"You're sorry?" he said, darkly venomous. "For what? For spying on us and stabbing us in the back? For endangering my daughter's life? For breaking her heart, or for nearly killing her? What are you sorry for?" He was right over Jonathan now, and _towering_, lawyer, judge, and jury and already declaring him guilty, unanimous verdict.

Trying to reduce the overall towering effect, Jonathan struggled upright with the help of an armchair, looking Bennet in the eyes even though it felt like blinding himself with a hot poker. "Um," he said weakly. "All of it."

He needn't have bothered with standing up. Mr. Bennet hit him with the gun, slamming it right where his cheekbone met his jaw, effectively stopping him from speaking altogether. Jonathan went to the floor with a throated cry of pain as his injured knee hit the ground, spitting blood onto the carpet. Mr. Bennet bent coolly over him, pressed the gun to his head, and pulled the trigger.

At least, that was what he meant to do. He fully intended to make the tiny, fatal movement with his pointer finger, the simple muscle twitch that would send this festering threat straight to Hell. But in the second between decision and motion, Claire suddenly popped into his head, hovering like a shoulder-angel, silent but insistent and staring at him with disappointed reproof. He felt Jonathan tense for his death, and wanted to kill him, rationalized that last finger-twitch—and couldn't shake Claire's eyes.

With a put-upon sigh, he brought the gun away from Jonathan's neck and instead smashed it against his temple, knocking the kid out cold. He nudged the still form distastefully, feeling as if he would regret this decision in the future.

In the new silence at the end of their scuffle, he suddenly began picking up another set of noises, seeming to come from behind the closed bedroom door. Leaving Jonathan in an unconscious tangle, he walked quietly over to the room, wondering what could be behind the door, and whether it could possibly be worse than what he'd encountered so far.


	46. Chapter 46

_The light had slipped through the window/   
The morning ripped you away, oh/ _

_You will leave me in the morning/  
Leave me in the morning/_

Nathan glared at his cell phone like it was responsible for his frustration, wanting to throw it out the window of the car in a burst of childish tantrum; instead, he simply gritted his teeth (he needed to stop that, his dentist was going to stab him to death with a mouth prop when he saw what he was doing to his brand-new caps) and dialed a different number.

"Hi, Mom," he said as soon as she picked up, sounding like the perfect society wife in the inflections of her _hello_. "I can't get a hold of Heidi, have you seen her?"

The tone of her voice changed immediately, plunging into bad-news disapproval. "Oh," she said carefully. "I don't think you're going to hear from her for awhile, Nathan."

"Why?"

Angela put a hand to her forehead, wishing that Nathan wasn't so very dense sometimes. Not that he wasn't smart—he was sharp as a tack in most areas, but he'd always been decidedly blind when it came to personal relationships. "If you must know, she's considering separating from you," she said, getting it out quickly and briskly, like ripping off a Band-Aid.

"What? _Why?_"

"Secrets, Nathan," she told him with a sigh, remembering days and weeks of knowing nothing about where her husband was, or what he was doing, and wondering if he would ever trust her. "Too many secrets and too many lies."

"But I _told_ her the truth," he said, sounding shocked. "I told her everything! Doesn't that mean she has to forgive me? Isn't that how it _works_?"

Angela allowed herself a sad pitying smile only because she knew Nathan couldn't see her_. Poor Nathan. _It wasn't his fault that he just didn't quite _get _it—he was so perfect in many other areas that it only made sense for him to have this fatal flaw. "You can _fly_, Nathan," she said gently. "You can _fly_, and she found out about it nine months late. How much of this did you expect her to take?"

"I don't know," he said, his voice flatline emotionless. "I just thought…I don't know. Never mind. I have to go."

---

Peter, Katie, and Claire stared up at the White House, silently admiring the clean-lined historical structure in unison with several dozen other sightseers, only with a slightly more pressing intent.

"I'm beginning to see a flaw in our plan," Katie said without taking her eyes off the building.

"What," Claire said, "you mean the one where we don't actually have any idea when this attack is going to happen?"

"Yeah," Katie confirmed calmly. "That one."

"So what are we thinking?" Peter said, running a hand through his hair. "Some kind of long-term stakeout?"

"Could be conspicuous," Katie pointed out.

"Yeah," Peter agreed vaguely.

"Yeah," Claire echoed.

They all seemed to be affected by the same stillness, a sort of calm lassitude brought on by proximity to Historical Buildings. Claire and Katie especially, who hadn't been to Washington DC or anywhere even nearly as full of monuments, didn't seem to be able to shake their awe. They didn't feel much like active, impassioned planning—they felt more like having a nice picnic, or perhaps passing a bill. Downtown, urban DC was as pushy and irate as any big city, but once one reached the Historical Buildings—peace.

"Do you think we'll be able to feel when he shows up?" Peter wondered idly, in the tone of someone discussing stock options and not presidential assassinations.

"I don't think so," Katie replied thoughtfully, watching his skin glint imperceptibly blue. "We'd better hope not, or the shields aren't doing their job."

Peter smiled crookedly. "Oh well. Wouldn't want to blow up the world, would we?"

"No," Katie said composedly. "That's generally considered impolite."

"Peter," Claire said urgently, a break in their society-tea-party atmosphere. "You're doing it again."

Peter looked down at his hand, dismayed to see that it was his own long-fingered, articulated appendage instead of being properly shapeshifted. "Drat," he said with a frown. "This is harder than it looks, you know."

Unused to sustaining more than one ability at a time, Peter and Katie had been letting their cover appearances slip all day, blurring back into their own, eminently conspicuous selves at fairly regular intervals. Claire thought that, all things considered, it was better that they focus on the shields, but it would be decidedly inconvenient if they all got arrested.

With a look of hurried concentration, Peter blurred back into the form of the weedy college student he'd been impersonating, and Katie checked herself over to be sure her disguise was holding—for once, it was. "We need to keep a closer eye on that," she said ruefully. "Someone's going to notice that we're not the same people all of the time."

"Not in DC," Peter joked. "They're all busy looking at the monuments or the traffic or the politicians, or we don't fit into any of those categories."

"They _are_ impressive monuments," Claire said. "Though I admit the politicians aren't as impressive as I thought they would be."

"They all sort of pale next to Nathan, don't they?" Peter agreed, feeling far more forgiving toward his brother now that he was whole states away.

"Exactly," Katie agreed. "I guess I was spoiled by seeing him first—naturally, I expected the rest of them to be just as charming, well-dressed, sexy—"

Peter made a choked noise, expression deeply pained. "Hold on with the personals ad there—you think my brother is sexy?"

Katie looked shifty. "Well, only in the way of being really, really attractive."

"Ack," Peter said.

"Don't ask if you don't want the answer," Claire said gleefully.

Suddenly, their conversation was cut off, broken up by the sound of sirens. Experienced fugitives that they were, they all jumped, instinctively pulling away to see whether they were being hunted down. They were—police cars were pulling in on all sides, boxing them against the White House gates with nowhere else to run. Peter glanced down at his hands, and realized with considerable distress that he looked exactly himself again, articulated hands and all, and a swift look at Katie told him that she'd slipped as well. They were quite seriously busted.

He has just started considering some sort of spectacular getaway (invisibility? telekinesis?), when his scheming was unceremoniously shocked away by the sight of his brother getting out of a police car. The surprise lasted only a moment, quickly replaced by anger and weary should-have-known resignation. Nathan flashed him a brief smile that seemed to be trying to communicate a great deal—brimming full of fury as he was, Peter heard very little of it. Hands were grabbing him and pushing him against a car, guns pressed into his neck and spine by over-wary policeman who had watched too much ten o'clock news. They were pulling his hands behind his back and cuffing them with an agitated delicacy, trying not to touch him more than they absolutely had to, like he was fragile or dangerous. Their eyes told him that he was something terrifying and volatile, less a person and more some kind of natural disaster, volcano, tornado, hurricane.

He saw Katie's eyes meet his, bright bottleglass-green and begging for direction, seconds from meltdown under the pressure that was too much, eight years of too much. He couldn't see Claire, but he could hear her sharp noises of protest, not any kind of weak and furious at being thwarted. Then, over the top of the car, he saw something that made him go still, a horrifying stop-motion, vision-tunneling frame of sight. A man was walking down the sidewalk in front of them, a man with a scruffy beard and an intent forward-leaning walk.

It was Ted Sprague. Ted Sprague was walking into the White House.


	47. Chapter 47

_The city is burning/  
The ocean is turning/  
Our only chance is the lighthouse/_

_It was Ted Sprague. Ted Sprague was walking into the White House._

As soon as Peter could electrify his heart back to life, he had only one thought, flashing neon in his mind in fifty-foot letters: STOP TED SPRAGUE. He began struggling as he hadn't before, trying to pull away from the policemen, who immediately jumped back in guarded startlement as they remembered the footage they'd seen on the news. He could feel their guns on him, and the red flickering dots of sniper sights from a distance, and in hopelessness and desperation he even tried appealing to his brother.

"Nathan!" he yelled. "Nathan, let me go, you don't understand—"

"I understand as much as I want to, Pete," Nathan said coolly, arms crossed and blending perfectly with the backdrop of marble and history as if he were born for photo ops, pictures in textbooks and under headlines. _Politician. Future President. I belong here. Vote Petrelli. _

"_No_," Peter said furiously. "You _don't_—Ted Sprague, Nathan, he's—"

"I _know_, Peter," Nathan said sharply. "You think you have to save the world, I get it. Well, guess what—_you don't_. The sun's going to come up tomorrow without you carrying it, okay? Get over yourself."

Peter gave an angry half-snarl in response, too frantic to argue semantics with Nathan. He wanted to explode, to burst all to hell and go after Ted, but he kept remembering scenes in comic books when the hero did impressive things like that—even as a child, he'd wondered about the collateral damage, about whose car it was that the superhero had thrown, and who it had landed on. The people he loved were pinning him back from that kind of display, surrounding him like cardboard 'Innocent Bystander' cutouts at a shooting range.

He took a deep breath and tried precision. With a focused flick of his mind, he caught hold of what he wanted, pulling out a 'file card' and using it like a razor, melting away the links of his handcuffs. Then, before anyone could notice his new freedom, he gave a controlled shove out from himself, pushing the officers against their cars. He grabbed a gun from one of them and took one last glance back—trust-me looks for Katie and Claire, an angry look for Nathan—then sprinted for Ground Zero.

He didn't hear the yells behind him, concentrated down to destiny-driven autopilot as he skidded into the building. On some vague inspiration, he paused an instant to shift into the form of Nathan, perfect camouflage for this jungle of marble and white. People looked at him with startled alarm as he raced past them and through them, interrupted at their leisurely touring by an apparent madman with a gun. Peter barely registered them, shoved them out of the way without a thought in his drive to the center of the building.

He slid to a breathless stop at an intersection of hallways, swearing furiously under his breath, useless sixth-grade tour facts flashing through his brain. _One hundred and thirty-two rooms, four hundred and twelve doors, eight staircases, three elevators. I am very lost. _All he could remember was that the Oval Office was somewhere in the West Wing, but he didn't know where that was or even which was west, and every second that went past meant that things were happening that he was supposed to stop. He did a swift mental reorientation and took the left hallway, jumping over a series of velvet rope barriers (who did they think they were kidding with those things, anyway? If they wanted to keep people out they should have installed massive electrical force fields, not _ropes_ that potential assassins could jump like subway turnstiles), trying to hone in on the most elusive of his abilities—mind-reading.

For once, he managed to grab hold of it, but it was instantly a liability as thoughts poured in like water from a broken dam, an overload of bland buzzing reflections and considerations beating through his head. He had to stop his headlong sprint under their attack, leaning against the wall for support until they subsided; as they all fell back to a manageable hush, one voice punched through the trivial tourist concerns, instantly recognizable in its brash unstable intensity. _Five more steps, _it said, _come on, this is how you want to end it. Someone deserves to pay for this. Someone has to pay. _

Peter broke back into a run, tracking the voice down the hall and into a side venue—and there it was, the scene from his dream, the soft taupe color of the walls and the fluorescent lights washing out the man walking toward the Oval Office.

Peter felt like he was walking through three feet of water, unfairly stuck in slow motion while the rest of the room was free to react. It played out exactly as he'd dreamed, the slowly growing furor, Ted grabbing onto the President in preparation for his spectacular kamikaze attack. Only one thing was different: Peter. He raised his hand coolly, suddenly leveled calm by necessity and obligation, and shot Ted Sprague, three clean shots that hit him in the back and dropped him to the carpet.

There was a split second of blank silence, of finality, and then the room exploded, Secret Service agents boiling around the President where he had fallen against his desk, arms livid with third-degree burns but alive, _alive_, and Peter faded back in relief. He saw his brother rushing belatedly into the room, and was suddenly struck by the problem of two Nathan Petrellis in the same room. He immediately turned himself invisible, grabbing Nathan's arm as he passed, all resentment and anger burned away by near death and near misses.

"Nathan, it's me," he whispered swiftly under his breath, hoping no one was paying attention to disembodied voices in the chaotic aftermath. "It's all right, I shot Sprague and he's not going to be blowing anything up, but I did it looking like you, I shapeshifted. You're the hero, Nathan."

"Peter—" Nathan protested, probably not out of any kind of selflessness, but Peter was wiling to give him the benefit of the doubt.

He thrust the gun into Nathan's hand and pushed him toward the door. "Go accept the medals or whatever, I don't care. I'll meet you back in New York."

As soon as Nathan moved forward, he was swallowed up by the growing crowd, Secret Service agents who wanted to get him to safety, hysterical aides who wanted to shake his hand and cry all over him. Through the uproar, Peter heard President Cordova's voice as Nathan fought to his side, saying "Nathan Petrelli! God, man, you've just saved my life—no, get off, I'm fine. Nathan, how did you ever—" _He is _so_ getting elected_, Peter thought with dry amusement as he slid out the door.

It took him some time for him to locate Katie and Claire in the milling mass of people outside the White House, but only minutes to get them free from the understandably distracted cops. He melted through their cuffs with surgical precision and pulled them away from the commotion, ignoring their frantic questions until they'd gotten some way down the street.

"Peter, what _happened?_" Claire asked with force bordering on desperation.

He pulled her into a sudden, irrational hug, needing to touch someone and not sure how Katie would respond to an unexpected embrace. "Um," he said helplessly. "Wow, where do I even start?"

"Did we win?" Katie said with raised eyebrows, hating the oversimplification of the question but needing the core of the story as fast as possible.

Peter grinned at her phrasing, a huge communicative grin that told them the answer before he spoke. "Oh yeah," he said with satisfaction. "We won."


	48. Chapter 48

_We went in/  
We climbed up and looked out/  
The door locked from the outside/  
Three ghosts in the lighthouse/_

Mr. Bennet approached the door warily with his gun held stiff-armed out in front of him, eying the knob with dislike. He didn't want to open the door on a potential threat, but he couldn't just walk away from a potential threat, either—it was an infuriating contradiction, and it would probably get him killed someday. He wished he could take the time to find his power-dampening and tranquilizing guns, he wasn't sure where they'd ended up in the scuffle—Jonathan had been considerably more trouble than he'd anticipated. Of course there was no time to look for them, never any time; there was no choice but to go one hundred percent fatal, but he couldn't honestly say he was feeling bad about that.

He took swift appraisal of the flimsy hotel door and then kicked it open, smashing straight through the knob with sledgehammer precision. As it swung brokenly ajar, he searched the room for occupants, feeling that nothing would surprise him at this point short of a pair of trapeze artists swinging from the ceiling fan. There was only one person that he could see, sitting up against the bed with a familiar tense posture, straight-backed and slightly leaning forward with avaricious life-lust.

"Bennet," he said in that voice that still made Mr. Bennet cringe somewhere inside, fortunately deep enough that it didn't show. "I _thought _I heard senseless violence being committed."

Mr. Bennet instinctively checked Sylar's neck, and was relieved to see the silver line of an inhibitor collar running around his throat. It would be that much easier to kill him with the collar on (there was no question of his conscience trying to talk him out of _this_ one, not even Claire would object to the death of the infamous Sylar). Sylar watched him take aim with teeth bared, reminiscent of a cornered animal but veryhuman in the survival instinct in his eyes, the gutsy will to live. Between one breath and the next, the breath when Mr. Bennet was to pull the trigger, Sylar suddenly exploded into motion, passionately unwilling to die. He hit Mr. Bennet low with all his focused forceful energy, linebacker-tackling him to the ground, trying to wrestle the gun out of his hand.

Knocked out of the upper hand by the surprise attack, Mr. Bennet felt the situation rapidly turn to a fight for his life as Sylar determinedly pinned him down, prying his fingers away from the handle of the handgun. He got a hand out from under Sylar's knees and thrust it determinedly into a pressure point on the side of his neck, making the man flinch away with a pained growl and loosen his hold on the gun. Mr. Bennet wrenched his hand out of Sylar's grasp with a final teeth-gritted effort, but Sylar managed to pin his wrist against the carpet as Mr. Bennet tried to get the gun up and around enough to blow his enemy's head to vindictive pieces.

Sylar scrabbled fruitlessly to get the gun back, then went for Mr. Bennet's throat with trademark fanatic predictability. Still unable to free his other hand, Mr. Bennet faced a swift, urgent decision—release the gun and be defenseless, or let himself be choked to death? It took him a few seconds longer than it should have to make the choice, with two such equally unattractive options, but finally he forced himself to drop the gun and try to get Sylar's hands away from his neck.

It soon became apparent that he might as well have hung onto the gun, after all—there was very little chance that he would be able to pry Sylar's hands away, locked in attack mode like iron around his throat. _Great_, his brain was saying with detached lucidity. _After all these years, this is a pretty embarrassing way to die—not even the excuse of special abilities to justify my mistakes. _

Just when his vision was starting to go hazily gray around the edges, he suddenly saw Sylar jerk as if from an impact, his eyes glazing to eerie unfocus. The hands went loose on his neck and he was able to push them away easily, shoving Sylar off him to reveal an unexpected sight: Jonathan, sitting propped up against the wall with Mr. Bennet's tranquilizer gun slipping from his hands. Mr. Bennet stared disbelievingly at the dart sticking out of Sylar's back, mind repeating a blazing _WHY?_ as if on a circuit loop.

"Don't _look_ at me like that," Jonathan said, with surprising ferocity for someone who looked like they'd lost a fight with a food processor. "What, do you _want_ to be dead?"

"No," Mr. Bennet said as he stood up, habitual suspicion fighting with sincere confusion. "No, I appreciate your help, your timing was impeccable. May I ask…why?"

"_No_," Jonathan said vehemently, tossing the gun aside with a murderous glower. "No, you may not. I don't want to hear it."

Mr. Bennet shrugged, frankly unconcerned with adolescent mysteries, and picked his gun up to carry out his original intent. As he turned to Sylar, though, he was again surprised to hear Jonathan's voice, sudden and sharp: "Hey! Wait a second, don't do that!"

"I'm not sure what's sparked this newfound goodwill," Mr. Bennet said with exasperation, "but this is an extremely dangerous killer, and I am very cheerfully going to shoot him in the head now. If you don't like blood, I suggest you look away."

Jonathan looked as if he wanted to throw himself in front of the gun, but was hindered slightly by the fact that his knee had several foreign objects imbedded in it. "_No_," he said, "you don't get it. He _is_ an extremely dangerous serial killer, but only sometimes, now."

Mr. Bennet stared blankly at him, patience disappearing at an alarming rate. "You've got fifteen seconds to explain what you're talking about, and then I'm blowing his head off," he said tersely.

"See, he's—"

"Thirteen seconds," Mr. Bennet interrupted, holding his watch up to eye-level.

"Back in Las Vegas, when—"

"Ten seconds."

"Would you _stop_ that?" Jonathan yelled. "Listen to me! When he killed Niki Sanders, he took her abilities, _including_ the weird freak-show schizophrenia thing. He's got this—_other _side now, Gabriel Gray, and he pops up all the time. I just don't think you should shoot him before we know what's going on with all this."

Mr. Bennet eyed Sylar skeptically. "A dual personality, huh?" Despite himself, he was interested; the part of him that the Company had capitalized on, the latent geek intellectual, wanted to know more.

"Yeah," Jonathan said helpfully. "It's really creepy."

Mr. Bennet sliced him a sharp glare, vividly remembering why he'd disliked this kid in the first place. "Why don't you keep your mouth shut until I decide whether or not I want to kill you, huh, champ?"

"I just saved your life," Jonathan reminded with an obnoxious grin. "If you killed me, I think the Gratitude Fairy would be obligated to come down and smash your head in with her sparkly wand."

"Shut up," Mr. Bennet said as pleasantly as he could manage, turning his back to Jonathan as he flipped his cell phone open. "It's rude to prattle brainlessly through someone else's phone calls. Hi," he said as the phone at the Petrelli house was picked up. "Who is this?" A raised eyebrow, a double-take. "Peter? What are you doing back? Saved the world already, have you? Really. Well, I would _love_ to watch the news, but I've got some problems I need to deal with first, two of them. Could you send someone over with a car, and could you make it fast?"

"Oh, you shouldn't have," Jonathan deadpanned. "I'm only bleeding copiously, there's no rush. Or is it that you want to clear out before someone realizes we're not just watching _Lethal Weapon_ with the TV turned up too loud?"

"Make it fast," Mr. Bennet repeated grimly. "Or there will be bloodshed."


	49. Chapter 49

_Gloria, we lied/_

_We can't go on/  
This is the time and this is the place to be/_

_Alive/_

Nathan gave himself a quick once-over in the mirror, watching his reflection as if he suspected it might suddenly jump out at him—in his crazy sci-fi life, it wasn't an impossibility. "I don't know," he said critically. "What do you think about this tie?"

"I think," Peter said seriously, "that the color of your tie will be directly responsible for whether or not you win this election. In fact, I'm not sure you should wear red, because Americans in general tend to associate red with communism. On the other hand, yellow was used in the Middle Ages to symbolize the devil, and green is unlucky in Britain, but then again your voters aren't British unless something has gone seriously wrong with the voting system, so—"

"No, really, don't continue," Nathan said with a hard smile. "I'm not sure why I'm asking for fashion advice from Mr. Sweatshirt anyway."

"You've got something against my sweatshirts?" Peter asked, miffed. "There is nothing wrong with sweatshirts—in fact, I think if politicians loosened up and wore hoodies to press conferences, it would be considered a major step forward by the American public."

"I thought I told you to shut up," Nathan said with amicable brotherly hostility, adjusting his tie.

"I really think we should get this sweatshirt issue out between us," Peter said with mock gravity. "I would hate to think that you're harboring some sort of angry resentment against my clothing choices, festering inside you every day—"

"Did you somehow get more obnoxious than before, or am I just repressing the memories?" Nathan wondered philosophically, tugging on his lapel to straighten it despite the fact that it already appeared to have been straightened by a laser leveler.

Peter walked up behind him and put his hands on Nathan's shoulders, massaging the coiled tension away. "Relax, Nathan," he said. "You've got this election in the bag. You saved the President, remember? That just about takes the cake, as far as publicity goes."

"I didn't save the President," Nathan said tiredly. "_You_ saved the President, Pete."

"Shh," Peter said gently. "You never know where the press might be hiding. I, personally, have caught them in several of the larger wardrobes, so keep your voice down, huh?"

"How am I supposed to explain Heidi?" Nathan said with sudden anxiety. "I mean, the _lack_ of Heidi, how am I supposed to explain my wife not being there on election day? I have press conferences to attend, soirees, boring dinners, and she is _supposed to be on my arm, looking gorgeous and smiling like a toothpaste commercial_! It's bad enough that I have a fugitive terrorist brother, I cannot deal with a mysteriously MIA wife!"

"One thing at a time," Peter said, graciously ignoring the 'fugitive terrorist brother' comment "You need to not think about Heidi right now, okay? By the time they notice she's not hovering over your shoulder like a perfect Mrs. Cardboard Congresswife, it will be too late for them _not _to vote for you."

"Thanks for the glowing endorsement," Nathan said irritably. "Could you do me a favor and go somewhere else for a little bit? I'm just—pretty tense right now."

"Okay," Peter said with a small smile. "No problem."

"You might want to take a look at Jonathan," Nathan said helpfully. "Bennet just brought him in, and when I saw him, he closely resembled a dead person."

"Why the concern?" Peter asked. "I thought he was Public Enemy Number One around here."

"He is," Nathan said with a sharky smile, looking more like himself than he had all day. "I'm just worried he'll get bloodstains on the carpet. You know how Mom hates that."

---

Jonathan couldn't get her face out of his head. His mind was obviously getting desperate in its attempts to distract him from the pain in his leg—it had now resorted to dredging up another kind of pain altogether, forcing him to remember the way Claire had looked at him. She'd been standing on the stairs, stopped halfway down with an expression that managed to be freezing and scorching at the same time, a feat which Jonathan felt to be an unfair breach of physical law. She looked like at him like he was the Devil himself walking in the door, and he felt that he'd rather stab himself to death with a butter knife than see her look like that again.

The really sick part was, he couldn't help wanting to see her again, wanting to talk to her and see her smile, like a lung cancer patient who still craved his cigarettes, clinging to the thing that was killing him. So when the door opened, his heart immediately went into jackhammer-overdrive—until he saw that it was Peter, looking very professional with his hands full of bandages and braces.

"Hi, Jonathan," he said, dropping to his knees and spreading the supplies out on the floor.

Jonathan gave him a suspicious, semi-hostile glare. "'Hi'? What do you mean, hi?"

"It's a greeting. It means hello, nice to see you, how are the twins, I got your Christmas card, I hope the shop is doing well—people started shortening it a couple centuries ago because that got to be a bit much."

"No," Jonathan said. "What I mean is, shouldn't you be shooting me in the face or something? I don't think I'm on 'hi' basis with anyone in this house."

"Uh-huh," Peter said dismissively, staring down at Jonathan's bloody knee. "Wow, you messed this up pretty bad, didn't you?"

"_I _didn't," Jonathan said exasperatedly. "What, do you think I decided to shoot myself in the knee just for the fun of it?"

"With what you young people get up to these days, I never know," Peter said breezily. "You might want to sing the ABCs or bite a sock or something, because this is going to hurt."

"Finally, a doctor who doesn't lie to me," Jonathan said nervously. "Though I can't say I'm crazy about the—ahhhh!" He grabbed the bedpost and bit back a scream, fingernails gouging into the wood.

Peter held up a blood-slicked bullet like a trophy, fingers red to the second knuckle. "Got it," he said with satisfaction. "And I'm not a doctor."

"What?" Jonathan said, white with pain and slightly hysterical. "Then why am I letting you stick your hand in my knee?"

"Two reasons. One, because you don't have a choice, Inmate Number 6783, and two, because I'm a nurse. Not as good as a doctor, I'm sure, but you're going to have to deal."

"Fair enough," Jonathan said, heartbeat slowly returning to normal, then skyrocketing again when Peter pulled out a needle and thread. "Wait, what is that for? This is not Home Ec, we will _not_ be sewing any pillowcases here!"

"Ever heard of stitches?" Peter said sardonically, deftly threading the needle. "If we don't get your knee sewn up, it will get infected, and I know of at least one person who would be happy to chop your leg off for me when it goes septic."

"Great," Jonathan said, closing his eyes. "Fine. Sew me up."

"Don't worry," Peter said with a smile. "I took Home Ec at least twice."

As Peter bent over his leg, Jonathan felt his brain kick into defense-distraction mode again, couldn't help the words coming out of his mouth: "How's Claire?"

He saw Peter go completely still, needle hovering inches over his knee. After a few moments, he straightened again and put the needle down, looking Jonathan straight in the eyes. "Look," he said. "Jonathan. Let's be honest here—you don't have a lot of allies in this house. In fact, I think it would be fair to say that most people in this house would happily kill you with a cheese grater. Now, I'm willing to protect you from them and their cheese graters—"

"Why?" Jonathan asked, surprised.

"Because I'm too damn nice for my own good," Peter explained patiently. "So I'll protect you, but there's a condition—if you so much as _touch_ Claire Bennet, you are on your own. You stay away from her, understand?"

"I wish I could," Jonathan said bitterly.

"You're going to have to," Peter said, voice gritty with protective menace. "I don't want to hear any dramatic teenage angst about how you're so in love with her, because I don't care. If you love her, you'll stay away from her—all you two are ever going to do is tear each other apart."

"I _know_ that," Jonathan said. "You don't think I know that? You can't control who you're attracted to, Peter."

"But you can control what you do about it," Peter countered.

Jonathan stared moodily at the wall behind him, burning a hole in the paint with acidic adolescent emotion. "Every time I look at her," he said, "I want to die."

"Better you than her," Peter said mercilessly, picking up the needle, conversation closed. "You ready for this?"

"Go for it," Jonathan said. "It can't possibly hurt worse than teenage angst."

---

Mr. Bennet closed the door behind him and walked down the hall, into the room where everyone was gathered around the TV, watching election results as if they were the Superbowl. He sat down on the couch between Claude and Claire, giving his daughter a quick hug and checking her expression to see how she was holding up under the strain of Jonathan's presence. She seemed calm, but tight somehow, like a watch wound too hard with the mechanisms straining not to break. The calm she'd learned from him—the tightness could be dangerous.

"Still nothing," he said quietly to Claude. "I've seen no manifestation of a separate personality, he's all Sylar."

"You think Jonathan lied?" Claude asked, keeping his eyes on the television.

Mr. Bennet saw Claire tense slightly at Jonathan's name. "I certainly wouldn't put it past him," he allowed. "I just can't see any motivation he might have for wanting him _alive._"

"Who says he has to have motivation?" Claude asked. "Years of Company programming on an impressionable teenage mind, I would be surprised if he wasn't stark bloody raving."

"Um," Claire said, "I hate to interrupt, but I have an idea."

Mr. Bennet stared at her a moment, still unused to a daughter with 'ideas' beyond pom-poms and nail polish. "Go ahead, honey, we're listening," he said finally.

"Well," she said, heartened by his acceptance. "You guys have got that control collar on Sylar, right?"

"Right," Mr. Bennet said slowly.

"And it blocks all his abilities," she continued.

"Yeah," Claude said blankly.

"_All _of them," Claire repeated. "Even extra personalities?"

They blinked at her a few times, processing, processing. "Bennet, your daughter is brilliant," Claude said finally. "I swear, the instant you chopped off all that blond hair you went from cheerleader to Nancy Drew."

Claire grinned, and they fell into silence, watching numbers run up and down the TV screen and realizing all the implications of their new discovery. "So," Mr. Bennet said. "Who wants to take the collar off?"


	50. Chapter 50

_Snow won't stick to the weeping willows/   
Summer was painted on our skin/  
And those secrets hidden in our childish lips/  
They would die for a kiss/_

"I've heard you two have been very clever," Claude said, looking down on Peter and Katie like a particularly crabby sort of schoolteacher.

"Oh, we have," Peter said. "You should definitely give us gold stars."

"I'll be the decider of that. I'm finding it difficult to believe that you could do anything worthy of even half a star. Show me," he commanded.

His students exchanged surreptitious, unsure looks, and then began staring down at their hands like they'd just seen them for the first time, watching them intensely until they began to glint with faint subtle shielding. Katie held her hand up triumphantly for Claude's scrutiny, proudly watching her fingers flash gunmetal-blue under the lights. He took her wrist and pulled it toward him, inspecting her skin with an air of skepticism. "You're sure this works?"

"Absolutely positive," Katie assured him. "Peter practically danced a tango with Ted Sprague and there was no apocalypse whatsoever—not even a small one."

"Hmm," he said. "I suppose you think this puts you out of danger, then?"

"Well, yeah," Peter said unconcernedly.

"You know why you think that? Because you're an idiot."

"Aren't you sweet," Peter said, nearly immune to Claude's verbal assaults by now, just barely able to feel the sting of his sarcasm._ I wonder what that means about me_. Had he become less sensitive? He'd never been exactly thrilled about being a walking target, heart bleeding all over his sleeve; on the other hand, he'd always loved the way he could relate to people in an instant, make them feel comfortable and make them smile. He didn't want to lose that. He _liked_ people—even Claude, most of the time.

"No," Claude said. "I'm not, and it's a good thing for you. The reason you two aren't dead right now is because you are very, very lucky. Ted Sprague is still alive, thanks to your bad aim, and I'm betting you've used up all your luck, so it's about time you actually _fixed_ your problems. You," he said, pointing to Katie, "can incorporate abilities and blend them into yourself like they're nothing, but you can't hold under pressure. _You,_" he said, turning his attention to Peter, "have great reaction, can take anything and keep going, but when it comes to keeping control of abilities you're a bloody mess. Now, I wish we could look at this as a cute little Jack Sprat partnership, but we can't. If either of you falls apart for so much as an _instant_, it's goodbye New York."

"So what do we do?" Katie asked in a small voice.

"You're both empaths," Claude said. "Two empaths in the same place at the same time, it's practically a miracle, and it's not likely to happen again—I think you'd better start acting like a team."

Without thinking, Katie reached out and took Peter's hand, lacing her fingers through his. "We can do that," she said firmly.

Claude stared at their intertwined hands for a long moment, suddenly making them both incredibly aware of touching each other. Peter's mind went into convulsions, fighting a swift violent civil war over whether he should pull away from her. The outcome was surprisingly quick and clean—he _wanted _to hold her hand, so he did. If he simply didn't allow himself to think it past that level, he seemed to be able to cope. He met Claude's eyes with the defiant expression he'd invented solely for this man, the "don't tell me what I have to do" expression, the "people I love are not distractions" expression. Claude gave an infinitesimal shrug and bulldozed onward, running over top of the potential drama with unusual discretion.

"Here's what we're going to do. I need you two to learn to mesh with each other, to overlap your abilities and plug each other's holes. This will work great with shielding, what with it being all pretty blue sparkles," he said sardonically. "But we need to work on your individual problems as well, Peter's control and Katie's durability."

"Let me guess," Peter said. "It has something to do with hitting me really hard."

"I'm definitely leaning that way," Claude said testily. "I'm feeling particularly like hitting you today."

"Wait a second," Katie said. "I have a better idea." They broke from their half-serious sparring to bring their attention to her, Peter interested and relieved, Claude automatically disbelieving. "Meditation."

"Meditation," Claude said flatly.

"Yes," she said firmly. "Meditation. That's how Linderman got me out of my own crazy downspiral, stopped me blowing things up on accident—he taught me this Indian-based meditation technique, I've actually worked on it with Peter a little bit. I don't know if it's going to save the world or anything, but it certainly helped _me_."

"Right, then," Claude said decisively. "You take Peter for an hour or two, but don't feel like you have to bring him back, we probably won't miss him. I need to go talk to Bennet about something that's just occurred to me—that is, if he hasn't gotten eaten by Sylar yet."

"You still haven't figured out what to do about the collar?" Katie asked curiously.

"Bennet and I were all for shooting him in the head and living with our curiosity, but you damned soft buggers would object, wouldn't you?"

"Stridently," Peter affirmed. "But don't worry—someday we may become so desensitized that we, too, can talk about shooting people in the head with perfectly straight faces."

Claude gave him an odd, snarky smile. "I've really had a bad influence on you, haven't I?"

"_Oh_ yeah," Peter said vehemently.

Katie grabbed Peter by the collar and began dragging him out of the room. "Stop winding him up," she scolded Claude. "I have to get him to relax for the next two hours."

Claude glanced at the expression on Peter's face, the way he stared at Katie like she was something wonderful and miraculous, a goddess or a lover. He raised an eyebrow. "Good luck with that."

---

Of all the people he could have imagined would walk into his room, Jonathan wouldn't have thought it would be Claire—never in a million years, never within a hundred feet. But there she was, outlined against the closed door with her hair falling across her cheek, looking harsh and strange and beautiful.

"Hi," he said, bewildered and suddenly, ambiguously guilty.

"Don't say that," Claire said sharply. "We are not on a 'hi' basis."

He dropped his head into one hand, the mere sight of her like nails being driven into his skull. "Of all the gin joints in all the world," he mumbled.

"What?"

"Nothing," he said immediately, "it's just—"

"_Casablanca_," she said in an odd tone. "I know."

"Claire," he said, still looking down at his knees, one normal, one swathed in white bandage. "What do you want?"

"I want to know what's going on here," she said. "I want to know where we stand, so I can stop fretting about some kind of awkward scene that may or may not happen."

"Where we stand," Jonathan said slowly.

"Yes," Claire said grittily. "Where do we stand, Jonathan? Why do I feel like I'm breathing water every minute you're in this house, drowning on something I can't see? Why do I feel like some crazy ex-girlfriend, why do I feel like we've broken up when we were _never going out in the first place_?"

He forced himself to look up at her, then regretted it as her eyes blazed smoldering craters into him. "Come here," he said. She just _looked_ at him, burning him back to essence and painful honesty. "_I _can't move, I'm chained to the bed. I'm not going to bite you, Claire, just come here." She took a few wary steps forward, fully willing to bolt if he made any sudden movements. "Sit down," he commanded, and she folded to the carpet so that she was inches away from him, tense and mistrustful but several miles nearer than he ever thought she would be again.

Before she could escape, as she surely would have if she knew what he intended, his free hand lashed out and hooked around the back of her neck, pulling her forward into a terribly inevitable kiss. It was short and violent and searing, feeling more like a sudden internal hurricane than a kiss, a mad tangled tearing of emotion bursting through the surface with destructive ferocity. He jerked away from her and she fell back, gasping, flushed to the roots of her hair and the whites of her eyes.

"What the hell was that?" she asked furiously.

"You wanted to know where we stand," he said, trying to steady his madly whirling vision. "That's where we stand, Claire—that's what it's going to be like with me, every second of every minute of every damn day. It's going to be fantastic and exciting and it's going to _hurt_, it's going to be a jump out of a plane without a parachute, a really fun suicide where we splatter ourselves all over the ground in the end. I'm a jerk, Claire, and I'm all wrong for you."

"What made you think I wanted to be _with_ you?" she said bitingly, irrationally wounded and desperately confused. "I'm sixteen, Jonathan! I'm not in love with you! As a matter of fact, I _hate_ you! I can't stand you at all!"

"Then why are you here?" he asked sharply, and she was silent, wordlessly white and red like a live coal. "You've got your answer, Claire," he told her finally. "Get out of here before you do something you're going to regret."

She looked like she wanted to scream, like she wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, or kick him or kiss him or kill him with her bare hands. Instead, she simply turned away, military-crisp with level square shoulders, and she walked out of the room. She slammed the door behind her.


	51. Chapter 51

_Like Vines, we intertwined/  
Carelessly growing up and growing old/  
Life was on our tongues/  
It tasted heavenly, so good/_

"I'm falling asleep," Peter announced.

Katie's eyes snapped open, twin slits of crackling celadon green. "You are not," she said. "We've only been sitting for thirty seconds."

"I am so," Peter insisted. "I'm _trying_ to listen to my heartbeat like you told me, but every time I do, my body goes 'hey, what a relaxing beat, and also mind-numbingly boring! I think I'll go to sleep.'"

"Believe me, Peter," she said. "The situations you'll use this in will be significantly less than boring—you're lucky I'm letting you learn it in quiet closed room, instead of throwing rocks at you or something."

"You're right," he admitted. "You're a much nicer teacher than Claude."

"Also prettier," she added archly.

"That too," he conceded with a shade too much conviction. "_Much_ prettier."

"Try it again," she said briskly, closing her eyes and settling back on her heels. "Relax. Bring your consciousness outside yourself."

"You sound just like someone from a movie," he murmured, only half-aware of what he was saying. "A fairy princesses, or one of those mysterious enchantresses with the voices like smoke and fog and streams after breakup."

"You're an observer," she continued unbroken. "You're outside of your body, and nothing can hurt you. Listen to the beat of your heart. It is the most important thing in the world—concentrate on it. There is nothing but the steady pumping, no sound and no world and no danger. There is nothing but your heartbeat."

"See, this is the part where I have the problems," Peter interrupted ungracefully. "My mind absolutely will not focus on my stupid heartbeat."

"All right," she said, defeated. "Let's try something else." She grabbed his hand and pressed it against her own heart, just below her collarbone. "Do you feel that? Count the beats in one breath—five on the inhale, five on the exhale. Come on," she insisted, "count with me."

"One," he said reluctantly, and she joined in with her light mezzo-soprano, "two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five."

"Relax," she said as he counted. "Breathe. There's no danger. There's no world. There's only you. Breathe." Suddenly, he stopped counting; she opened her eyes and found him staring at her, watching her unabashedly with his eyes full of something she didn't quite want to identify.

"God, you're beautiful," he said in the tone of a museum patron, hushed and admiring. Before she could reply to this (what _could_ she say? She'd never been in this situation before), he said: "Let me take you to dinner tonight."

She pushed his hand away from her chest. "Peter, we can't."

"Why _can't _we?" he asked, slightly petulant. "Is it against the rules? Well, you know, we were the ones who made those rules up. Apparently, we wanted to be miserable, but I've changed my mind. Let's just _try_, okay? If either of us has mental breakdowns, I swear we can stop—it's just, I'm starting to think that maybe we're stronger than we thought we were."

"No," she said. "I mean, we _can't_. We can't go out of the house, we'll get arrested or something."

"Oh," he said, deflated. "Well, screw that. We've _been_ out of the house, we've been hundreds of miles out of the house, and we saved the world, remember? We can even go to a movie instead—it'll be really dark and everyone will be too busy making out to even notice us."

"Your control _has_ gotten better," Katie admitted. "And Nathan's not around to drag us back…"

"Believe me, we won't see him until tomorrow morning, one way or another. Nobody else will stop us, either, they're all too busy with Sylar. We can even tell Claire what we're doing, in case they freak out."

"Okay then," she said with a bright sudden smile. "You're on."

---

"This movie sucks," Peter said, loudly enough that people three rows away turned to glare.

"Yeah," Katie said more quietly. "I can pretty much predict everything that's going to happen from here. I could write this script in my sleep."

"You want to get out of here?" he asked.

"Please."

Once they were outside the theater, Peter remarked, "I guess it's our fault for choosing a scary movie, isn't it? I mean, after skull-chopping serial killers and radioactive crazy men, what could Hollywood possibly make that would scare us?"

"Exactly," Katie agreed. "They should be getting _us_ to write their movies, we've seen it all." They walked out into the city dusk, and Peter put his arm around Katie and pulled her in, shielding her from the night. She looked up at him, and past him to the buildings behind him where they smashed against the sky, blocking out whole swaths of stars. "I love this about New York," she said lazily, locking his maple-brown eyes with hers. "The way it never really gets dark, with all the signs and lights everywhere—it just goes to grayish half-night and stops, stays in six o'clock stasis until dawn."

"That's New Yorkers for you," Peter grinned. "Absolutely determined to squeeze every minute out of the day that we can. Mere mortals might let the sun dictate their lives, but not us. We know what we want and we find a way to get it."

She smiled and opened her mouth to answer, and suddenly went rigid in his arms

He felt a sticky dampness at her shoulder blade and then there was blood on his hands, two spreading patches of blood dying her shirt to red, and her eyes were going out and she was falling back in horrible ironic déjà vu.

"No," he said numbly as she slid from his arms to the pavement, her dark hair fanning out onto the cement. "No, no, _no_, this is not happening! Not again!"

He looked up and saw Candice there, circling toward them, looking like a destroying angel with a gun in each hand. She raised her right hand and squeezed off a shot, but the bullet froze midair inches away from Peter, slamming into a wall of telekinesis and white scorching anger. With a violent sweep of his hand, he sent her smashing into the wall, squarely between two movie posters with a look on her face that could have given any of the horror starlets a run for their money. She felt a small spine tingle as he walked toward her with his eyes like burning cigarette ash, blazing from the inside, combusting and imploding with repeat tragedy.

"What, are you going to kill me, Peter?" she said, managing to sound cocky and condescending, entirely in control.

"You think I won't?" His voice surprised him when he heard it, coming out rough, torn on its own anger.

The air and the wall twisted, blurring, turning her into a dark-haired-green-eyed-gold-skinned Katie Ramira. "No," she said. "I really don't think you will."

Behind them, he heard a sudden burst of violent coughing—he turned to see Katie sitting up, looking surprised and breathless but alive. In an instant he was down on the pavement next to her, arms around her and holding her to him so tightly that he couldn't breathe but he didn't care, and he was getting blood all over the front of his shirt but he didn't care. "I didn't think you would heal," he saying, words tumbling over each other, incomprehensible. "You've never healed before, I didn't know if you—God, Katie, I thought you were dead."

"It's okay," she said soothingly, wrapping an arm around his neck and hugging him back, assuring him that she was, indeed, warn and animate and alive. "I'm fine. I'm okay. What happened?"

Abruptly thrown back into reality, he turned to where he'd left Candice at the wall. But that had been seconds, minutes ago and, of course, she was gone.

---

"I've figured it out," Claude told them.

Katie and Peter sat looking up at their mentor, hands scrubbed and clothes changed, playing innocent so hard that halos were nearly visible over their heads. They'd both agreed that it would be best not to tell anyone that they'd snuck out of the house like rebellious teenagers, and especially not the results of their disastrous date. It was likely that, if Nathan and Claude and Mr. Bennet were to hear of it, they would never be allowed out of their rooms again, much less the house.

"Oh," Katie said pleasantly. "What have you figured out?"

"How to keep you two from turning the Big Apple into applesauce."

"Really?" Peter said. "Well, we've always been open to not dying."

"That's part of it, actually," he commented. "All your indulgent melodrama aside, there's actually very little chance that you _would_ die, even if everyone else did. If you've acquired this radioactivity, you've also acquired the ability to survive it, otherwise Ted Sprague would have been a pile of ash long before this."

"That makes sense," Katie agreed.

"So," Claude continued, "if you were to throw a shield _around_ yourselves, a sort of bubble, you could potentially contain a nuclear blast without getting hurt at all."

"Gee," Peter said. "I'm flattered that you have such a high opinion of our talents, but you've got to be kidding. You seriously think we can hold a nuclear explosion inside of a shield?"

"It's a hell of a lot better than the alternative," Claude said. "It wouldn't be as hard as you think. If you throw the shield around a large area, say, two hundred feet on all sides, it would give you far more of a chance."

"Why?" Peter asked blankly.

"It's all to do with surface area and blast radius and things," he said. "It's very technical, we'll explain it to you when you're older. Point is, the blast will be weakened and spread out enough by the time it hits you that you've got a good chance to stop it there, if you're working together."

"You know, I bet we could," Katie said happily. "Of course, the best plan would be just to not explode in the first place, but at least now we have a back-up option."

"They've got Sprague on pretty heavy lockdown in DC, but I doubt we've seen the last of him," Claude pointed out. "Now, I want you two to practice making that kind of shield-bubble, meshing with each other—"

Suddenly, the door flung open and Claire burst in, brimming with uncontained joy. "He won!" she yelled at them.

"What?"

"He _won!_ Nathan won the election!"

--

Nathan felt like he was standing on top of the world, bigger than everyone and everything, feeling the planet turn under his feet. He kept going back to look at the numbers, the thousands who had voted for him, each of them like a personal validation of his worth. He wanted to call up a dozen people and yell the news at them, rub it in their faces—his opponent, Linderman, his mother-in-law, that girl who had turned him down in the tenth grade. Ha, he wanted to tell them, look at me, I'm the king of the world—or at least of New York. An entire state had just turned their keys over to him, trading him authority for smiles and promises, and it was an addictive alcoholic rush.

This, he knew, was the moment he would hol in his mind for the rest of his mind, the memory he would replay when things went wrong, the story he would tell his grandchildren over and over until they were sick of it. This was a victory like nothing he'd ever experienced, so far beyond student council and court cases, a massive cosmic win. He was high, he was indestructible, he couldn't be stopped now.

He walked onstage to the blended roar of cheers, sucking in the energy of the crowd like a plant in the sun. He made it halfway to the podium before he saw Heidi. She was standing beside the microphone, smiling harder than any toothpaste commercial _he'd_ ever seen, dazzling but demure, the perfect cardboard wife. He missed only a single step, driving himself through the shock with sheer willpower until he made it to the center of the stage.

He leaned to kiss her on the cheek, whispering, "So does this mean I'm forgiven?"

"No," said. "Maybe. Congratulations."

He took her hand, squeezed it, and began his victory speech.


	52. Chapter 52

_Run where you'll be safe/_

_Through the garden gates/_

_To the shelter of/_

_Magnolia/_

_There's not much time/_

_The blush in the sky begins to fade/_

Claire heard it first in the blast of the PA system, the unintelligible words rolling over the city from police car-mounted speakers, blunted by the walls of their house. They sent an instinctual fear through her, and instant awareness of something gone wrong, and she rushed to turn on the TV. She didn't even have to choose a channel, there it was—EVACUATION, in screen-high letters. Nuclear threat, they said, escaped terrorist, leave city immediately.

She clattered up the stairs and ran for her father, yelling, banging into the room so hard that Peter immediately pushed her back, clapping a hand over her mouth. This was the moment they'd been waiting for all day—Sylar was asleep, and it was finally safe to take off the control collar. Mr. Bennet was bending to remove it, moving as carefully as he would have with a live bomb, hands light and surgically precise. They were hoping that the Gabriel personality would immediately surface, but if not, there were two ex-Company agents standing by to plug him full of tranquilizers.

But her news was more important than science projects, so Claire shoved Peter's hand away and told them, whispering fast, "_Ted Sprague is out!_ He escaped, he's in New York, and they're afraid he's going to blow up the whole city! They've blockaded all the bridges and they're evacuating everybody, we have to _go!_"

Behind them, cutting off their reaction, Sylar's eyes snapped open and he roared to life, knocking them back with a flick of his hand. They fell under the force of his invisible pressure, collapsing like dominos, swept as if before a wave as he threw them aside. Claire hit the wall with painful force and her head snapped back, everything turning instantly black like the flick of a light switch.

When she woke up, she was crumpled at the base of the wall, tangled in a heap of motionless bodies that looked like a battlefield, stretching across the room. She was the first one to revive—_probably the healing thing again_, she thought—and, fortunately or unfortunately, Sylar was nowhere to be seen. She sat up stiffly, pulling her legs out from under Katie just as the woman began to stir.

They came conscious in intervals, seconds from each other like a natural chain reaction, organically waking one after another. "He's gone, isn't he?" Mr. Bennet asked grimly, inspecting a bruise that was forming on his arm.

"Of course he is," Claude said. "I guess we've got our answer, though—if there's a Gabriel personality, he'd definitely been repressed."

"Right," Mr. Bennet said authoritatively. "Everyone pack your bags, we're leaving in five minutes."

"What do you mean, we're leaving?" Peter said, aghast. "What about Sylar?"

"If Sylar gets hold of Ted Sprague, he's just as dangerous as you," Mr. Bennet said sharply. "He heard us talking about Sprague, he's gone off, and now we're sitting on a time bomb, and it's ticking down every second we waste arguing about it."

"So we're just going to run away?" Peter accused.

"We're going to stay alive," Mr. Bennet said, harsh and uncompromising. "Five minutes. Be downstairs in the library."

Claire caught Peter's eyes just as he was about to object, holding them with a meaning stare. He shut his mouth and gave her a slight nod, disappearing into the hallway toward his room.

--

Mr. Bennet glanced impatiently at his watch, pacing over to the windows. "What's taking them so long?" he said, voice even but tight with tension.

They were waiting for Peter and Claire, had been waiting for Peter and Claire for some time now, watching the pour of people through the streets become less and less, turning to a trickle. Claude tapped his fingers on the bookshelf, then suddenly looked up, jerking his head toward the door in sudden realization. "You don't think they—"

Katie's eyes went wide like a deer, horror filling them quickly to the top. "They wouldn't."

A silence while they considered this, and then the conclusion: "Yes, they would," Mr. Bennet said, and they sprinted toward the stairs.

---

Katie came into Jonathan's room flushed and upset, hair in a careless disarray that made him instantly get to his feet, feeling disaster from her like a visible force. "Have you seen Claire?" she asked him frantically.

"No," he replied, concern ratcheting up at the mention of her name. "What's going—" Katie turned to leave, but he grabbed her wrist, now helplessly invested. "Tell me what's going on," he insisted.

"Sylar escaped, and Peter and Claire went after him, even though he'd heading right toward Ted Sprague. They're trying to save the world as usual, but they're going to get themselves killed this time."

"Let me loose," Jonathan said, voice low and intense like a dark bass chord.

"What? No," Katie snapped, still full of unresolved resentment for this boy she'd taken under her wing, who had turned out not to need her wing at all.

"Come on, Katie!" he said, rattling his handcuff against the bedpost. "What were you going to do, leave me here chained to the bed? I am _not_ going to let her die! I swear, I'll chop off my own hand if you don't let me go after her."

Katie gave him an odd, searching look. "Fine," she said after a few seconds. "Let me see your cuff."

---

Sylar found him in the middle of the street, weaving between empty cars like a sleepwalker, slow and methodical, rippling with white-orange energy. _Such power_—it had been all he could do not to charge aimlessly in that very second. But he was a far better hunter than that. He had waited, and he had chosen his moment, and now Ted Sprague was lying at his feet, his blood dripping down the sides of taxis into bright pools of red on the asphalt.

He felt the power rush into him like being struck by a lightning bolt, dangerously potent and volatile, charging him so full he felt he must be glowing. Then he realized he _was_ glowing, bones showing through his skin, burning up with power that roiled inside of him, and for the first time it occurred to him that he might lose control. He felt the radioactivity roar like a wild animal within him, elemental and unharnessed, tearing through him and paralyzing his limbs, bursting out from him in shockwaves that melted the cars and street signs, bending them as it was bending him, eating him like an acid and controlling him—

No. He grabbed hold of the power and savagely twisted it down, forcing it to submission as he had with dozens of other abilities. He would not be ruled. He would not be controlled. It began to subside, rebellion lost, and he was safe again, unconsumed.

He caught a flicker of motion from the corner of his eye and snapped his head around to it. He knew the faces in an instant, and he smiled—the universe was bending for him again. As if his day couldn't get any better, here were the two people he would most have wanted to see—Claire Bennet and Peter Petrelli.

--

Peter was severely creeped out by the sight of an empty New York City. Partially, it was because of the similarities to his dream, but also it was the _quiet_, the unnatural stillness devoid of the yelling and honking and bustling vivid life he was so used to. He and Claire were walking very close now, huddling together against the alien cityscape, shoulders brushing. He was checking his shields every few seconds, reassuring himself of their blue shimmer in the sucking, deafening silence. In the end, the emptiness helped them—they saw the lights from blocks away, not a full-scale explosion but a few ripples of radiation, enough to draw them. They could tell when they reached the site by the twisted metal and ash, and by the corpse of Ted Sprague lying in bloody mutilation against the wheels of a car.

"He's dead," Claire said blankly.

"Yeah," Peter said, and without thinking, dropped his shields.

It was like being hit by a sunbeam at first, gentle and warm, not intrusive, not noticeable. Then, the heat began to build—something was boiling under his skin, burning, and Claire was looking at him in horror. He looked down at his hands and they were glowing, looking exactly as they had in his dreams. "No," he said hysterically. "No, this isn't possible, he's _dead_!"

Then, in his line of sight, there was Sylar, head and shoulders above the cars and smiling as he downspiralled into Hell. The power was pouring into him now, filling every inch of him and fighting to be let free. He opened his mouth to yell at Claire, to tell her to run and get away, but he couldn't, choked by the force that was charging him from head to foot. It began to escape him in waves, bursting from him and crashing against the already-melted car frames despite all his efforts to stop it. This was it—after all the months and the dreams and the warnings, he'd lost it all, lost it to a moment of stupid inattention. He was a comet, bright destruction, a horrible screaming death for the capital of the world, a disaster unlike anything anyone had ever dreamed. He watched, helpless, as Claire threw her arms up against the waves of radiation, skin blackening where it touched, and he thought, _not even she can heal from this_, and the realization burned worse than the nuclear power that was eating him alive. It surged against his willpower and he went to his knees, trying with every fiber of his being not to be a bomb, not to be death, and failing, losing ground like water from a sieve—

Suddenly, there were footsteps around him, and someone was dropping to the ground, grabbing his wrists, pulling him against them. He saw Claude and Mr. Bennet, and Jonathan holding onto Claire, Candice next to Sylar, and Katie inches away from him, yelling over the explosion.

"Shield, Peter!" she was screaming. "_Shield!_"

Somehow he pushed through the pulsing charges racking his body, locking with her, blue shields going up from their intertwined hands, two hundred feet on every side, and the people they loved were within the bubble but he couldn't let himself think of that, had to concentrate on holding the shields that couldn't possibly hold, not against the terrible storm of nuclear chaos that was beating against them. He clung to Katie and in some part of his mind he knew they were screaming, could feel his nose bleeding and his ears, torn apart by millimeters as a nuclear explosion drove mercilessly against their shields, and his vision went black, white, red with pain as he bit straight through his lip, and it couldn't hold, they couldn't hold—

And then there was silence.

They didn't move for a long time, ash-covered statues in a dead garden. Finally, Peter tried to pull away, panic rising as he saw the destruction around them, yards of black charred ground but no people. No Jonathan and Claire, no Mr. Bennet, no Claude, no noise except the wind through the ash. He felt himself start to break, cracking under the strain of apocalypse, but Katie's hands were on the sides of his head, pulling his forehead to touch hers, murmuring quiet and soothing.

"Calm down," she was saying. "It's okay, Peter, we did it. Relax. Breathe. There's no danger. There's no world. There's only you. Breathe."

_---FIN---_

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The end! I'm done, with one day to spare—I turn you over to the brilliance of the _real_ "Heroes" writers. Sorry about the horrendously tragic ending—they seem to be the only kind of ending I can write :) Anyway, it's close to canon as far as the massive character wipeout, so I hope you guys don't hate me too much.

You all have been incredible—I loved every review, every word of encouragement. I'm thinking about writing another fic once "Heroes" breaks for summer, so look for me! Thank you again!

CLARIFICATION: I've had a few questions about what, exactly happened in the end. Here's what happened: they saved New York, but everyone died…yep. Really. It's all very sad.


	53. Chapter 53

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here's what's going on with this: I'm not completely satisfied with the way my ending turned out. A few of you made comments to the effect that the last chapter seemed rushed, and I suppose that's true—I had imposed this April 23rd deadline on myself, but when it started to get down to the wire I wasn't quite ready to finish, so it got a little…squashed.

This is the result of my dissatisfied brooding: an alternate ending I naturally deviate toward tragedy, but I'm pretty sure that's not a common sentiment, so here's a slightly different direction. It's somewhat similar, and you might recognize a few of of the runs, but the outcome is way different. Hope it helps!

_Run where you'll be safe/_

_Through the garden gates/_

_To the shelter of/_

_Magnolia/_

_There's not much time/_

_The blush in the sky began to fade/_

"I'm getting the feeling that this is a really stupid idea," Claude said, looking down on Sylar where he was curled at the foot of the bed, asleep but not looking peaceful, only still and predatory.

"That's probably just a side effect of this being a really stupid idea," Mr. Bennet said calmly, sliding cartridges into his sleek steel tranquilizer gun. "The feeling goes away after awhile."

"What if Jonathan was lying?" Claude said, vocalizing the fears that were hanging over both their heads. "What if we take the collar off and there _is_ no Gabriel personality? What if there _is_ a Gabriel personality but it doesn't show up, and he takes our heads straight off like a bad barber?"

"Pick your excuse," Mr. Bennet said. "If you want to back out, there are certainly plenty to choose from. I, however, am going through with this."

"Well, when you put it _that _way," Claude said, nettled, "obviously I have no choice."

"Which is exactly why I put it that way," Mr. Bennet said with a small smile that disappeared when it got to his eyes, shielded away by half an inch of glass. "So—do you want to do it, or shall I?"

Claude glared him with tunnel-vision eyes. "You must be joking."

"Right," Mr. Bennet said sardonically. "Keep me covered, then."

Claude hefted his own tranquilizer gun as Mr. Bennet bent over Sylar's still form, feelings of foreboding fluttering like stage-fright butterflies in his stomach. "You're _sure_ he's asleep?" he said compulsively.

Mr. Bennet sighed. "I'm sure," he confirmed, pointing to Sylar's eyelids, blue-veined and pulsing. "See the way his eyes are flickering under his lids? That means he's in REM sleep. It's hard to fake."

"I know _that_," Claude snapped. "Don't forget who it was that taught you all your clever tricks, Bennet."

"Oh, I couldn't possibly," Mr. Bennet said, voice shaded with nuance.

He slid his fingers under Sylar's collar with light precision, careful not to touch the man's skin. Then, barely breathing, meticulous, he pushed the nose of the pliers under the thin metal band and applied careful pressure. The collar snapped apart with a whiplash snap like a released spring, and Mr. Bennet leapt back as he saw Sylar's eyes come open, coppery brown like dried blood, alert. Claude had a lock on him already, gun aimed steadily at his head, and Mr. Bennet swiftly brought up his own threatening laser sight as emphasis. Sylar, for once, didn't seem likely to charge them like hapless matadors—he brought a hand to his temple, looking pained, and Claude and Mr. Bennet exchanged triumphant looks.

Sure enough, within seconds there was a new dominance in the sharp-jawed face, a taut horror and innocence. "I'm sorry," was the first thing out of his mouth, miserable and small. "Whatever I did, I'm sorry."

"It's all right, Gabriel," Mr. Bennet said in his snakecharm trust-me voice. "You're in a safe place now. We're going to help you."

"Dr. Suresh," Gabriel said, half-coherent, connecting severed strands of memory. "I was going to see him—"

"Mohinder Suresh is dead," Claude said with characteristic bluntness, earning a frown from Mr. Bennet.

"No," Gabriel said, hysteria mounting. "No, that can't be true. I—did I…I mean, was it me?"

"In the purest sense of the world, yes," Claude said. "You killed him a few weeks ago, during some kind of run-in with Peter Petrelli. We're still not sure exactly what you were doing in his apartment, but perhaps you can help us with that, yeah?"

Gabriel's hands twitched in his lap, his eyes shining briefly with vicious rising violence. "Sorry," he said again, sounding so strained that Mr. Bennet brought his gun up again, alarmed. "It's that name, I think—Peter Petrelli. He really, really wants something connected to that name, wants it so badly it's like swallowing fire."

"Then we won't say it," Mr. Bennet promised smoothly. "We certainly don't want to bring Sylar to the forefront, here."

"It's only a matter of time," Gabriel said, hopeless, reasonable. "I'm two souls in one body—I can't ask the other soul not to break loose, and I can't stop him from trying. He's stronger than me."

"There's a defeatist attitude if I've ever heard one," Claude said irritably. "Get a backbone, man! I think I understand where this Sylar personality came from in the first place—you're practically begging for domination."

"I am not," Gabriel snapped. "I just wanted to be _noticed_."

"Well, now you have been," Claude said. "Good job. You got what you wanted, and _he_ got it for you."

"All right," Mr. Bennet said, calmly mediating. "There's no point arguing the psychology of this. What we need to find out is if it's possible to permanently subdue Sylar. If not—"

"Then what?" Gabriel said, head snapping up. "You'll kill me, right? Can't have Sylar running around."

Mr. Bennet winced, blindsided by his unexpected perception. "Well," he started.

"It's all right," Gabriel broke in, eerily calm and determined. "I thought about killing myself weeks ago, but I couldn't figure out how to do it."

Claude snorted. "That's exactly what I'm talking about," he said. "Don't you have any will to live _at all_? If you had an ounce of fight in you, this wouldn't be a problem."

"Claude," Mr. Bennet said warningly.

"Even _Peter_ was better than this, and that's saying something."

As the words came out of his mouth he instantly realized the name he shouldn't have said, but there was only had a split-second of forewarning, a familiar fanatic eye-glint before the storm broke, broke out, broke through. Sylar came bursting through the tissue-paper willpower of Gabriel Gray, ravenous and lucidly feral with his control collar on the ground. Mr. Bennet and Claude responded with mach-five reaction time, snapping their guns up and shooting with professional aim, but it was far too late.

Sylar swept them along with their bullets, pushed them before a wave of pent-up telekinesis into the wall, slamming them unconscious with their guns clattering down at their sides. He smiled, gritty and tenuously sane, almost glowing with freedom, weighing the lives of his former captors against the voices that were coming up the stairs, confused and worried at the noise of his homecoming. With a small sigh to himself he bowed to common sense and slid into the hallway, glancing back at the unmoving forms with a silent promise, an addition to his checklist coming just overruled by the importance of staying alive. He would be back for them, and then they would be dead.

---

Candice felt the buzzing of her cell phone against her leg like an angry insect, trapped, actively irritating. She swore quietly and fished it out of her pocket, changing her angry tone only just in time when she saw who it was. "Linderman," she said, smiling hard. "I appreciate the checkup, but this is really not a good time."

"That's not my concern," he told her disapprovingly. "I need an update from you, and I need it now—'I'm working on it' is no longer an acceptable answer. I need to know if you're going to get me Peter before we all die of old age."

"Depends," she said sarcastically. "You'll die sooner than me, you're really old already."

"If you don't start doing what I ask, that may not be true," he said, threat couched in a comfortable easy manner.

"Look, I'm outside the house right now, okay?" she said. "It's not like I'm sitting around in Starbucks drinking frappucinos all day, I _am_ trying. I don't even have a partner anymore, remember?"

"Yes, that was unfortunate," Linderman said, and she was surprised to hear a note of real concern in his voice. "I don't suppose you've managed to learn anything more about Jonathan's fate?"

"That sounds like a huge waste of time," Candice said coldly. "Bennet would have no reason to keep him alive. Weren't you just yelling at me about how we're on a schedule?"

"I never yell," Linderman said with admirable self-possession.

"Right," Candice said darkly, pushed to the brink of her patience by endless surveillance and construction workers and mental snapshots of Peter with his hair all over his face and his smile like white Christmas lights. "Well, I'll have you know that things are getting pretty desperate here—I'm bored to death and frustrated, and I'm probably going to end up doing something that you won't approve of."

"At this point, I'd welcome anything," Linderman said tiredly.

"I guess we'll see, won't we?" Candice said, voice glittering with last-shot purpose. "Well, I'm going to go—I've got some Petrellis to terrorize."

"Call me when you make progress," Linderman commanded, "and Candice?"

"What?"

"It had better be soon."

She made a face into the receiver and snapped the phone shut with more force than necessary, pushing her shifted-disguise-blond hair out of her eyes and glaring at the Petrelli house as if she could make it crumble with sheer force of will. She wished she could; she wanted to kill him. She wanted to kill him and didn't want to kill him, wanted to tear and burn him out of her thoughts, wanted to stroke the side of his face like a lover and to shoot him in the head.

She was unceremoniously snapped out of her love/hating by the sight of movement in the house, a flurry of shadows that meant action like she hadn't seen for days. Her blood pumped up to quicktime and she settled into a ready stance, bracing her feet against the wet grimy pavement. She watched a figure drop from the second-story window, so reminiscent of her own Alcatraz escape, and she quickly positioned herself to meet the escapee just as he was coming onto the street. As the face began to come out of shadow, sharpening into familiarity, she was struck by a sudden bolt of certainty that this was a bad idea. His head swung around to her, characteristic narrow-eyed Sylar, like a jackal smelling blood. Panic crackled up her spine—_he can't possibly recognize me_, she told herself. _I'm shifted, I'm disguised, I look like freaking Marilyn Monroe, there's no way he knows who I am. _

He didn't seem to care about impossibilities—before she knew, he was grabbing her arm and dragging her into deep shadow, looking at her like he wanted to eat her, like she was one of his victims. Then it hit her—_he can sense my power. He doesn't know me but he'll kill me anyway. _She had no intention of being a checkmark on his list—she shoved him away hard, and pulled her gun on him, startling him enough to buy a few sentences.

"You want to kill me?" she snapped. "Go ahead, slice my skull off right on the Petrelli's doorstep, that's _really_ smart. How long do you think it will take them to get here? How long do you think it will take for me to put a bullet in your head?"

"Do I know you?" he said, angling for a hole in her defenses, a weakness with which to reduce her to a red splash on the wall.

_Linderman is _not_ going to be happy with this one_, she thought grimly as she made her choice, knowing that there were no choices left for her, no roads without roadblocks. She gave an internal sigh and took the leap, shifting down into her normal body, seeing his eyes catch fire with recognition. "I work for Linderman," she said. "I'm after Peter Petrelli, and I think we might be able to help each other." It was the right tactic—she saw his shoulders thrust forward at the name, barely-contained motion.

"What if I said I don't need your help?" he said warily.

"Then I'd say you're a fool," she said bluntly. "Of course you need my help, what are you going to do, just walk out there into a street full of people who watched America's Most Wanted on TV last night?" She concentrated for a moment and blurred the air around him, changing him into a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair, unrecognizable. There was a noise behind them, the sound of a window sliding open, a yell. "You'd better choose fast," she warned. "They're coming."

She shifted him back, and now he was looking at her with a different sort of predatory stare, the kind she got in bars and clubs—she could feel his eyes over every inch of her skin, raising goosebumps. She noticed for the first time how very attractive he was, for a serial killer, and she smiled to herself. This looked to be a more foolish situation than even she had anticipated, but on the other hand, there was nothing like a possibly-fatal rebound to take her mind off Peter.

There was another noise above them, and she turned to go but he caught her by the shoulder, leaving his hand on her skin for much longer than he should have. "Wait," he said. "I'm coming with you."

---

Katie pulled a slim volume from the library shelf, gold letters pressed into the leather in the sprawling script that had caught her eye, a familiar name connected to familiar memories. _William Ernest Henley_ the spine read, and the words sparked chain reactions in her mind—her fingers knew exactly what she was looking for, and she found it within minutes. "Out of the night that covers me/" she read aloud, her words absorbed by the soft wood and paper. "Black as the Pit from pole to pole/ I thank whatever gods may be/ For my unconquerable soul/." She barely needed to read the words, so burned were they into her, branded, black scar tissue inches deep. And there they were, the last lines that was more battle cry than poem, a defiant scream into a hurricane, striking sparks against anything strong that had ever been in her. "I am the master of my fate/" she read. "I am the captain of my soul/."

She sat down on the couch with the book still in her hand, remembering the way she'd clung to those words with fierce bitter irony in the years where she'd been alone with nothing but white walls and helplessness. For a person with no freedom, they were nearly alcoholic, intoxicating in their headlong rebellion. She'd read them and told herself that she _was _the captain of her soul, like a psychiatrist soothing a patient, telling herself that there were things that she could control no matter what else happened. Of course, she realized now that there wasn't much that they couldn't take from her, the mobsters and the guards and the doctors with their tests, but the poem had seemed to help, then—she'd lived vicariously through it long enough to get out, mostly unscathed. She had never been as strong as William Ernest Henley, or even Peter Petrelli, but it was a comfort to know that there _was_ strength in the world, that there _were_ screams against the hurricane even if she wasn't the one screaming.

As if summoned by her thoughts, a genie from a bottle, Peter appeared through the double doors. "Hey there," he said, smiling like a sunrise. "I've been looking for you."

"How's it going upstairs?" she asked. "Are Mr. Bennet and Claude okay?"

"I don't know," he told her simply.

"I thought you were patching them up, Nurse Boy," she said, brow puckered with worry.

"I was," he said. "They're not going to die anytime soon, but they've got some lovely bruises."

"Good to know," she said, placated. "Now, why were you looking for me?"

"I want to show you something," he said with blunt mysterious charm. "Follow me."

She swiftly overcame her natural distrust in favor of his eyes and smile, following him through the hall with his hand a gentle pressure on her wrist. "Peter, what is this?" she laughed as they came to the back door. "We're not allowed outside, remember?"

"Come on," he urged, his smile burning brighter as he pulled her out the door.

Defenseless against him as always, she was about to step out after him when she heard a puzzling noise—Peter's voice. Slicing down from the top floor was the unmistakable light tenor, an inexplicable phenomenon that made her instantly backpedal from the hand around her wrist. It was too late—the grip tightened and she felt a sharp prick on her arm, chemicals pumping into her before she could tear away or open her mouth. _Candice_, her mind said with crystal lucidity, her last waking thought before the world all slid together, collided, and turned to black.

---

"You really think this is going to work?" Sylar said, gazing at Katie where she lay like a corpse on the carpet, dubious and not a little hungry, like a starving man surrounded by a banquet that he couldn't eat. He was feeling the pulse of Candice and Katie against his consciousness, already imagining what he could do with their abilities, what it would be like to take the rush of power into himself and be more important, better and stronger. He hadn't known that he had this much discipline, but after all it was only for now, delaying instant gratification in search of a larger goal, _the_ goal, the obsession.

"It'll work," Candice said confidently, sidling up beside him so that their arms were brushing, sending two kinds of lust through his skin. "He's absolutely crazy about this girl, and he's got such a hero complex anyway that he'd do anything we ask."

"Why don't I just kill her instead?" Sylar said, thinking out loud. "She's meant to have the same ability as him, right?"

"You don't mean that," Candice said silkily. "I know how much you want him, it's not just a power thing anymore. And even if it was, she's not nearly as powerful as him." She watched him against the lights, killer-in-profile, and she wondered just exactly how long she would be able to keep him in check. She was slam-dancing on thin ice, juggling chainsaws, standing in a house on fire with the roof about to come down. In spare moments she let herself wonder why she was doing this—how, with all her training and cynicism, she had managed to get into this situation. She could only ever come up with one answer: Peter. He was in her head, three kisses that burned under her subconscious and left her thirsty, powerless, and she would get him out of her if she had to cut him out herself.

"So what do we do?" Sylar asked, voice thick with curbed impatience. "Send a ransom note? That's kind of tasteless, and predictable."

Candice marveled again at his sharpness, the cut-glass edges of his unexpected intelligence. She'd always been amused at his various breakouts and escapes, interpreting him as nothing more than an animal, wild and inexplicable. That was a part of him, it was true, but the surprise came from other places—his calmness, his confidence, his cold Faustian humanity. He had a charisma and a dark healthy glow, disarming, dangerous. He was an animal and he was so much more, layers collapsing in on layers like a well-constructed house of cards.

"I told you," she said to him, "it doesn't matter if _we're_ predictable, because Peter reads like a book. We tell him where to meet us and he'll be there, wide-eyed and heroic."

"All right, then," he said. "Let's give him a call."

"All right."

They had somehow turned toward each other in the course of their conversation, coming to stand face-to-face, nose-to-nose with the buzz of sexual tension charging the air between them. Neither of them were known for their self-control—they lasted only a few seconds.

"Oh, come here," Candice said, and kissed him.

---

Claire stuck her head into the bedroom, brown hair sweeping over her face. "Peter," she called. "There's someone on the phone for you."

Peter wiped his bloody hands on the bedsheets—an action that he knew he'd regret when his mother saw it but couldn't be bothered to think about now—and headed toward the door. "Claude, keep that ice on your leg," he instructed. "Bennet, you're good to go, just no fast movements for awhile."

Claire passed him on his way out, hugging her father with tears in her eyes that she made sure he couldn't see, worry piled on love piled on what-would-I-do-if-I-lost-you. Peter smiled wryly as he glanced back at her, frankly jealous of the parent-child relationship he saw in Mr. Bennet and Claire, in Nathan and his own father. He was glad that Claire had the bond that she did, but that didn't stop their inside jokes and affectionate touches from grating on old skeletons, eight months buried. He crossed the hallway and picked up the phone, tone more brusque than he'd intended. "Hello?"

"Hi, honey." The voice on the other end immediately tipped his teetering mood, plunging him sideways into heart-in-mouth alarm.

"Candice? How did you get this number? What do you want?" He wished he sounded less frantic, more threatening, but that was Nathan's specialty and not his.

"Aren't you missing something?" Her tone was light, mocking, a cat not yet ready to kill.

"I said, what do you want?" There, that was a bit more Nathan, a bit more steel in his voice.

"Take a head count, sweetheart, you're down a player. Or didn't you notice she was gone?"

It took him a moment to understand, but then the phone was dropping from his nerveless fingers, hitting the floor with a sound like thunder to his shellshocked ears. He stared at it, unblinking, as his mind processed this new disaster. _Katie_. _She's got Katie._

There was noise coming out of the phone still, and he forced himself to pick it up and hold it to his ear, make motions of normalcy. "Now that I've got your attention," she purred, "let me tell you how this is going to work. Tomorrow at noon, you'll come to Kirby Park. If you're there, you can trade yourself for her like it's an auto dealership, and she'll walk."

"What happens to me?"

"Now, you don't expect me to spoil the surprise, do you? Don't worry, it'll be fun—I've missed you." Her voice was full of wicked, razored amusement. "I'm sure you've seen enough movies to know the drill here: come alone, don't try anything funny or you'll never see darling Katie again, blah blah blah."

"I'll kill you," he said, his voice dead. "I'll kill you."

"I'll kill your girlfriend," she said sweetly. "New rule: no stupid threats. I'll see you tomorrow, Peter—don't even _think_ about standing me up."

---

"She said to come alone," Peter said dully, staring at his hands so that they couldn't see how worried he was, how weak. _I'm such an idiot_. _I can't believe I was stupid enough to fall in love again. Apparently I'm a slow learner. _

"Well, screw that," Claude said blankly. "What, are you stupid?"

"Yes," he said firmly, "and I _really_ don't want to get her killed, okay?"

"That's fine," Mr. Bennet said calmly, "but there are better ways to do this. You need to let us help you."

"Right," Peter said unconvincingly

"I should call Angela—" Claude started.

"_Don't_," Peter cut in immediately. "Don't call her, don't call Nathan. They've got more important things to worry about right now."

"More important than you playing sacrificial lamb?" Mr. Bennet said sharply. "Let's be honest, Peter, you might as well shoot yourself in the head than hand yourself over to that woman."

"It is _my_ fault they've got her, and I am not going to just leave her there!" Peter came violently to his feet, knocking his chair over backwards.

"Peter," Claire pleaded, grabbing his sleeve. "Let us help. We can get you both out of this, it doesn't have to be one or the other. Please let us try to fix this." She pulled him back down, setting his chair upright and soothing him with her aloe-vera voice. He felt his nerves fizzle against her gentleness and die a little—he was so raw, bruised all over with emotion and high-strung threat, but it helped to have her understand.

"Okay," he said. "What did you have in mind?"

---

Sometimes Nathan felt like he'd never get a chance to step into a Congressional office at all, would simply keel over with exhaustion like an overworked dray horse before he was ever inaugurated. He'd thought campaigning had been hard, but it turned out that campaign hours were nothing compared to the life of a Congressman—he was yanked to and fro by an overflowing agenda, inflexible and enforced by a legion of uncompromising aides. Dinners, conventions, interviews all flew by with dizzying rapidity, and he felt like he hadn't caught his breath in years. Through all of it he had to stay upright and conscious, to keep smiling and addressing Issues for the upturned faces of the public, and he wasn't sure how much longer he could keep the smile from cracking.

His mother had told him that it was only like this in the beginning, that it would calm down once he was inaugurated and he would have plenty of time for breathing and golf. All he could think was that he now understood why politicians always seemed crazy, corrupt and abnormal—nobody could go through all of this and come out sane, not Mother Theresa or Superman and certainly not Nathan Petrelli.

He'd been up since four o'clock that morning, rewriting a speech that hadn't turned out like he'd wanted, getting dressed in his limo and gulping down a breakfast shake on the way to a rally in Manhattan. During the drive, he'd managed to shore up his willpower behind his three hours of sleep, but when he'd stepped out of the limo he was instantly pulled aside, whisked from his path like he weighed nothing by his considerably larger bodyguards.

"What is this?" he demanded irritably, decidedly not in the mood for irregularity.

"Sorry, Mr. Petrelli," his head of security, Perez, said deferentially. "We need to leave."

"Leave? What? I have a rally to go to!" He pulled his arm out of the man's grip, now seriously annoyed.

"I'm sorry, sir," Perez said implacably, "we have to go, there's a serious terrorist threat and the city is going to be evacuated within the hour. There's a helicopter waiting outside for you."

"Terrorist threat," Nathan said quietly. "Ted Sprague."

"Sir?"

Nathan snapped back into the moment, grabbing his guard by the lapel. "Ted Sprague, is his name Ted Sprague?"

"Yes, I think so," Perez confirmed, carefully detaching the hand from his jacket. "Now if you'll follow me—"

"Dammit, I will _not_ follow you," Nathan snapped. "Somebody get me a phone!"

"Mr. Petrelli," Perez said, losing his politeness in favor of doing his job, "don't make me do something we'll both regret."

"If I do not talk to my brother _right now_," Nathan said, shoving a finger into his bodyguard's face, "he will _die_. _Thousands_ of people will die, do you understand?"

Perez grabbed his arm and steered him forcefully away. "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that, sir—if you'll recall, your brother is also a wanted terrorist. You're a Congressman of the United States of America and it is _your duty_ to get in that helicopter and get to safety."

Nathan pulled away, bridling like a colt with his first saddle, furious. "Get me," he said, voice low and smoldering danger, a physical force, "a phone."

"I'm sorry, sir."

"For what?"

"For this," Perez said, and he punched Nathan.

---

"Go fish."

"You're lying," Claire accused.

Peter widened his eyes over his cards. "Claire! Would I do such a thing?"

"Yes," she said firmly. "There are only two cards left in the pile, Peter—the probability of you having that queen is pretty unbelievably high."

"Well, I was never much good at math," he said implacably. "Go fish."

She grinned at him, and for a moment he even smiled back, which meant that her card-game distraction ploy was working. She wasn't nearly as good at pity-distraction as he was, but she was doing her best to keep him from self-flagellation and despair. She sighed dramatically and plucked a card from the thin pile. "Fine. Your turn."

Their game was interrupted suddenly as Mr. Bennet came into the room, uncharacteristically disheveled with his tie cutting crookedly across his chest. "You two," he said, "go pack, now!"

"Pack?" Peter said blankly. "What for?"

"Are you _deaf_?" Mr. Bennet asked, sharper than Claire had ever heard him speak. He crossed the room in a few strides and threw the bay windows open, letting in a blast of noise like a stereo with the bass too loud, blurred loudspeaker words. "…nuclear terrorist threat," they heard. "All citizens must evacuate the city at once. Repeat: evacuate the city at once."

Claire surged to her feet, scattering cards over the carpet. "_Ted_," she gasped. "How did he get out? What are we going to do?"

"We're going to leave," Mr. Bennet said, taking her by the arm. "Five minutes to pack, Claire bear, hop to it."

"What, we're just going to _leave?_" Peter said, appalled. "It's eleven o'clock—I'm supposed to go after Katie in less than an hour, they still have her! Not to mention the whole damn city is going to go up in flames, and _we're_ the only people who can stop it."

"Not sure what you had in mind, there, Jack Bauer," Bennet said impatiently, "but I am just a paper salesman. I'm a little more interested in saving my daughter than saving the world."

"_Fine_," Peter seethed. "Go! Run away! _I_ have an appointment in Kirby Plaza and I am _not_ going to miss it!"

"I wish I could let you make that choice," Mr. Bennet said coolly. "You're a danger to yourself and to your city, and you simply cannot go out there without a plan."

"We _had_ a plan," Peter said. "_You're_ the one who doesn't seem to want to follow

it anymore. You want to stop me?" He took a step back, planting his feet against the carpet and throwing his hands out to either side, defiant come-get-me with a dangerous spark in his eye. "_Try_."

"What do you want me to do?" Mr. Bennet said icily. "Tackle you? I'm starting to understand why your brother has so many gray hairs."

"If you want to stop me leaving, it's going to have to be something pretty damn drastic, and it's going to have to be in the next ten seconds." Peter said, crossing his arms. As they watched, he began to disappear in on himself, dissolving into invisible air. Mr. Bennet instinctively started forward, but it was too late—they heard footsteps on the windowsill and then the window was swinging open, the only signs of his unstoppable departure.

Mr. Bennet put a hand on his head, bottling his obscenities for the benefit of Claire, who was standing next to him, staring at the window like she thought it might explain to her what had just happened. They both stared for a moment in mutual silence and consternation, trying to resolve the issues of trust and sacrifice. Then, Claire turned and looked him in the eyes, and he knew with a sudden sharp surety that the daughter he had raised was gone for good. The woman standing before him had no room in her head for indulgence or smallminded suburban life—she was cosmopolitan and hard, beautiful and hard, self-reliant and reliable and diamond-rock-hard. She was a cockroach; she was a survivor, and she knew what she loved. She knew who she was and she wouldn't be detracted, would not be beaten. There would be no lying to his daughter anymore—she was all grown up now, and ready to face her own lies.

"Right," she said. "Let's go after him."

---

"Well, this is nice," Candice said briskly, propping her stillettoed feet on an empty park bench. "I suppose this is what it must feel like to be in Disney World after hours." Sylar gave her a tense smile, but Katie ignored her, staring out at the endless stretch of empty cars on the street beside them, a skeleton graveyard of humanity. They'd watched citizens-turned-refugees pour out of the city, running as New Yorkers never did away from a problem that they couldn't yell down. Now they were alone—three small nobodies in a city of nothing, consumed by vast empty spaces and the echoes of tiny sounds. It made Candice uncomfortable. "Don't worry, sweetie," she said to Katie. "I'm sure your knight in shining armor will be here any minute. Of course, he might have decided to get the hell out and save his life, but no one ever accused him of being smart."

"Please shut up," Katie said calmly, staring a straight line down the street.

"Or what?" Candice said, snarky bad temper out in full strength, charged by her uneasiness.

"Or I'll give you a really mean glare," Katie said sarcastically. "Why? Obviously you have the upper hand in this situation, but you just can't seem to be quiet, can you? You kidnapped me, slapped a collar on me like I'm some kind of domesticated animal, dragged me here, and now you want _what_ from me?"

"I just want to make sure you know what you've got here," Candice bit back. "Frankly, I don't know what Peter sees in you, your eyes are too close together and you're so _boring_, but there's no accounting for taste. I'm not sure how you scored Mr. Right, but you had damn well better be grateful for it, and you'd better know that whatever happens to him today, it will be your fault."

Katie laughed with a sharp bitterness that sounded strange coming out of her natural sweetness. "You're jealous," she said, smiling so that her teeth just barely showed. "That is _so_ romance novel of you! And here I thought you had a boyfriend."

Candice flicked her eyes to Sylar's coiled still form at the end of the bench—he hadn't spoken for hours, going deeper and deeper into himself until he was nothing but intensity and dilated black eyes. He was still nice to look at, the sharp jaw and the sweep of his cheekbone, but he scared her a little. "Don't you just love it how, when you kiss Peter, he gets his hands all tangled up in your hair? I mean right at the back of your neck, practically feels like a massage—"

"Did I tell you shut up already?" Katie said, but her skin was flushing under its golden tone, turning to a heated, angry russet. "Or was that just wishful thinking?"

In that moment, there was a sudden prick on the horizon, an approaching blot of shadow that made them both instantly silent, argument forgotten. Sylar leaned forward on the bench, thrumming with contained energy that threatened to burst out like a tidal wave, all-consuming and vicious with undertow. "Speak of the devil," she said lightly, voice grating over last-minute guilt. _You're doing your job_, she told herself sharply. _This is a good thing_. _He's a problem for The Company and he's a problem for you—if he's in this world one more instant you will be at his feet begging to move into a house with a white picket fence. You're in love with him, and it needs to stop_. She felt slightly bad about consigning him to a bloody, severed-skull death, but at least it would be quick. _See, you're doing him a favor_, she tried to convince herself. _If you let him live and dragged him back to Vegas, he would be begging for death within hours. At least this will only hurt for a minute. _

Her rationalizations were getting more and more ridiculous, sounding hysterical even to her own denial-blocked ears. _You don't have to do anything_, she told herself firmly._ You couldn't stop it now if you tried. _Peter was only blocks away now and coming far too fast, not anything like dramatic movie entrances and not seeming to care. She saw Katie sit up straight beside her, torn with relief and worry, dragged into two pieces by her sense of self-preservation.

She could tell the moment Peter caught sight of Sylar, his steps halting for a second and his eyes going wide with surprise and dismay. To his credit, he kept coming, walking through his fear until he stepped onto the grass of the park, ten feet away from them. Sylar rose from the park bench and they stood facing each other, parallel, like two gunfighters in a western waiting for the first draw.

"What is he doing here?" Peter said, but he barely got it out of his mouth before the question was answered spectacularly, violently. Sylar lunged toward him, lashing out with his power and throwing Peter back into the street, slamming him into a taxi with enough force to break the frame into twisted bent pieces that punched through Peter's chest like cardboard. Katie's heart skipped a breathcaught beat to see the blood pumping out over the ugly warped metal even as she knew it was fixable, prayed that he would be able to pull himself back from death quick enough to stop Sylar, who was advancing on him with a hungry eager step that said he had only seconds left.

Just as Sylar reached the destroyed taxi (second time he's been killed by a taxi, she thought hysterically, he should stay away from them, one of these days it's going to stick) Peter began moving again, pulling himself off the pieces that had impaled him with a tearing throated cry, pain that usually meant death. Sylar leapt back in surprise, apparently new to this particular ability of Peter's, snarling with the frustration of not winning as easily as he'd thought. "Of course," he said, biting off each word. "The cheerleader, how silly of me. Well, that just makes it a little harder."

"Try a lot harder," Peter said breathlessly, bloody as a victim in a horror movie. His shoulders came straighter as the last of his fatal wounds healed, and Sylar instinctively braced himself at the expression on his face, cornered and dangerous. Katie saw Peter's eyes flick to her, could almost read his mind even with the control collar on—she could tell he wanted to let loose, go full throttle as he'd never had the chance to, but he was too worried about her to try it. Sylar would be one hundred percent concentrated on him, but Peter would have Katie hindering him, splitting his attention. This was not good.

Sylar came at him like a cat pouncing, purely physical attack from inches away. Peter made his move just before Sylar hit, turning himself invisible, fading into nothing but the backdrop of the empty city. Sylar snatched at the blank space and touched nothing, whirling with a snarl on his surroundings that were so deceitfully cloaking his prey. He cocked his head to the side and stood still, shaking with toxic tension—his eyes snapped right, and he threw his hand out like he was casting a spell, violent and sure. Katie and Candice's bench shuddered under sudden impact, and Peter came visible again, pinned motionless against the wood.

Candice leapt to her feet, annoyed at this unwarned disruption, but Katie stayed sitting, grabbing onto the bench to keep herself from running like a startled deer. She tried to figure out what help she could possibly be to Peter, trapped like a bug under glass with Sylar coming closer, and her with nothing but her nerves and bare fists. But he didn't need her help—he pushed back with his own telekinesis, sending Sylar skidding away with enough pressure to release the hold and let him up.

Before Sylar could recover, Peter's attention was on Katie, hands at her neck scrabbling with the control collar. She felt the heat of the metal melting, dripping onto her skin but she didn't cry out, couldn't distract him and only tightened her grip on the bench. Just as he'd managed to get it off there was no more time, Sylar was back and Katie was no longer in the picture, only two titans clashing with the force of a breaking thunderstorm, elemental and impossible and bright with power.

Katie felt the energy rush back into her as she scrambled to get out from between them, the abilities that had been locked away and were now coming back to make her whole. Through the charge she felt something else, more subtle and frightening, the prickle of sixth-sense warning at the back of her neck. She turned just in time to see Candice bring a gun up behind her, and she swept her hand out against the attack, sending Candice into a tree several feet away. The woman screamed but didn't let go of the gun, tenaciously keeping her hold and swinging it back to point at Katie, sending a line of fire that she just managed to duck. The bullets were coming at her fast and too close, and twisted exploded debris was slicing in from Peter and Sylar, and it was too much, too much—

She stumbled behind the bench and fell to her knees, her thoughts all swimming to chaos and her body shuddering like an earthquake. The world kept churning around her, tearing itself to pieces but she couldn't move, couldn't move couldn't see couldn't breathe and she was so useless and broken, alive with nothing to live for. Her brain ground to a halt and everything was frozen and she was frozen, an empty statue with only the sound of her grating breath in her ears.

Two sounds registered with her frayed consciousness: the sharp metallic click of a gun being cocked, Candice with her gun inches away from her head and seconds from pulling the trigger—and Peter. Behind her, she heard him scream like his soul was being torn out from his chest, a sound that punched through the chaos and seared against her awareness, shattering her to pieces. _Peter_, her brain said, lucid at last and building momentum, snapped into reality by the sound of his voice.

She heard the gun fire and before she knew it her arm was lashing out, snatching the bullet out of the air with a speed that she'd forgotten she had, buried for years under trauma. She dropped the bullet onto the ground and swept her foot at Candice, kicking her feet out from under her and sending her tumbling to the grass. Katie immediately went for the gun, wrestling it out of her grip as Candice scrambled back, giving Katie a thirty-second window to shoot her to death.

The gun felt strange and cold in her hand, and the idea of murder felt equally as alien as it tried to force itself through to her hands, tried to make her pull the trigger. Candice saw the freeze in her eyes, the panic coming on, and she took advantage of it as she'd been taught to do. She leapt forward under Katie's gunsight, reaching to grab it from her hands—and then the sound of a shot bit into the air, breaking the emptiness of the city into separate shards. Katie looked down on Candice where she collapsed, blood running out onto the green of the grass, and tried to understand what had happened. _Did I do that? Did I shoot her? What just happened?_

Behind her she heard sounds, footsteps, and then Mr. Bennet was standing beside her with his gun spitting smoke. He watched Candice dispassionately as she struggled to draw breath past the metal lodged in her chest and failed, dying. "Well, that was close, wasn't it?" he said.

Katie didn't reply, not sure whether to thank him for saving her or yell at him for murder. Three more figures appeared beside Mr. Bennet, Claire, Claude, and _Jonathan_, she was surprised to see Jonathan but she supposed they couldn't have just left him. They were the good guys.

No one was looking at Candice anymore, attention caught by the harsh sound of explosion—something big going down in Kirby Park, something epic like a legendary battle of the gods. Claire saw Peter and started reflexively forward, but Jonathan caught her arm and dragged her back. "You can't," he told her. "This is way out of our league."

Katie, watching the yin-yang magnates of power toss impossibilities at each other like they were snowballs, was inclined to agree. As they looked on, tense and helpless sideline spectators, Peter sent electric bolts at Sylar that were thick as his wrist, wielding lightning without a thought but to stay alive. Sylar caught the bolts with a wall of freezing cold, turning them deadly jagged ice spears that he slung back at Peter with blinding speed, a rain of icicles like teeth gaping to chew him apart. Peter batted them away with a sweep of his hand and they shattered on rocks, impaled trees but didn't impale him.

They were feet away and neither could move closer, polar magnets with an invisible buffer of power between them. Peter had blood on his shoulder and legs but no wounds, aftereffects of healed injury—Sylar was not so injured but not so lucky, a shallow gash showing through the arm of his jacket. They circled each other like swordfighters, looking for holes, looking for weaknesses and finding none. Sylar's hand shot out behind him and a car rose from the street, suspended as if on wires and hurtling toward Peter like a comet. He threw his arms up instinctively over his face, and the car came to a shuddering halt but Katie could see it quivering, barely stopped. Peter lost the hold and the car slipped a few more inches, jolting down to crush him but then caught again, and Claire gave a small scream through the hand over her mouth.

Peter looked over at the sound of her voice, startled, and Sylar grabbed the opening, slamming in with his stronger telekinesis to bring the car down on Peter, pinning him to the ground with a sickening crunch. Looking horrified, Claire immediately started forward and this time Katie was with her, drawn out by peril and pain—Jonathan and Mr. Bennet stopped them before they got a few steps, shouldering in front of them while Claude grabbed their arms and jerked them back.

"Stop it!" Mr. Bennet said sharply. "He's _fine_, but he _won't _be if you get in the way!"

Sure enough, Peter was already pushing the car off like a vintage Superman comic, healing breaks and cuts with a quickness that was almost quick enough, almost enough to beat Sylar. As Peter pulled his legs out from under the car, Sylar was already on top of him, putting his hands on the metal frame and melting it, turning it liquid and bringing it down on Peter's legs, blistering liquid hot metal. His head snapped back and he screamed, sending Sylar flying back with the force of his sudden, searing pain.

Immediate threat dealt with, he put his own hands on the metal encasing his legs, forcing it to melt away and free him. Katie gagged at the sight of his calves, blistered and charred, black and red and raw and healing far more slowly than she would have liked. He struggled to his feet and stumbled, unable to hold himself up on his still-mending legs, grabbing the park bench for support.

Sylar was already up and shaking off the blow, levitating pieces of shrapnel to his shoulders, building momentum to send them bulleting at his foe. Peter heard the whir of the metal just in time and threw up a hasty shield, causing the shards to bounce harmlessly feet away. He called up the electricity again, sucking power from streetlights to throw them into eerie half-shadow that was lit only by the crackling volts in his hands. He threw a tangled clot of electricity at Sylar and the man barely dodged it, diving to the side and showing worry for the first time in the drawn lines of his brow.

Peter pulled in more electricity, charging the air around him to a surreal supernaturality that even Jonathan had never achieved, like a lightning storm with him at the center feeding fueling creating the storm. Sylar took a three-second look at him, strong and wild and crackling power, and swiftly backpedaled, retreating behind a row of cars.

Claire watched his silhouette against the snapping voltage and wanted to go to him, but didn't dare, breath caught in her throat at the sight of him so fiercely powerful like nothing she'd ever seen. She understood now how a man could destroy a city, how a human being could be so all-consumingly intensely strong that nothing could stop him or stand against him. She understood what they were afraid of.

Sylar, too, was starting to see how very much he'd bitten off. This was not like he'd expected, ever expected to see. He'd wanted power but he'd never known how much power there was, contained in one person like a fragile clay shell. It filled him with uncontrollable lust, and it made him afraid. He hadn't planned on ever finding something he couldn't handle.

Something moved in the corner of his sightline, and he jerked his head around instantly to see a man, walking down the street with exultant vicious steps, taking in the empty city like it was his own personal validation. The recognition was there instantly, the knowledge that this man was not ordinary but _special,_ prey for taking even if he wasn't Peter. A deeper realization picked up on the man's face, his beard and sunken eyes and told him that this was the cause of the empty city, the man who had Hiroshima in him.

He watched surges of radiation ripple out from the man like probing feelers, small but toxic, scorching everything around him. He watched the way his bones lit up and the easy brutal confidence and he thought, _Such power, _a marveling and a desire. The power to level a city. The power to destroy a world. In that instant his decision was made for him—with this kind of power at his hands he would easily be able to kill Peter Petrelli, to match him impossibility for impossibility and take him down like a falcon stooping from the perfect blue sky.

He stood up and began moving forward.

---

Peter wasn't going to let Sylar get away, not this time, but he was willing to wait for the killer to come to him. The man was somewhere out in those cars, skulking retreat and regrouping, and Peter was fine with that. As he'd fought he'd drawn deeper and deeper in himself, and had found with each stretch that there was more depth than he'd thought, more power and more strength. His confidence had built and he knew now what he was, in ways that he never suspected from his former tentative dips into his ability. He could win this fight. He could do anything.

He let the electric firestorm subside a bit once Sylar was out of sight, but still kept his defenses up and his eyes sharp for the kind of ambush-attacks that the man had been consistently pulling. He turned sideways to look at his audience, the people that he'd seen in snatches and flashed but had never had the time to stop for. Mr. Bennet, Claude, Katie, Jonathan, and Claire stood in a tense, bitten-fingernails straightness, looking as white as ghosts and looking at him like he was one. He gave them a tight smile and waved. Claire immediately starting coming forward but he motioned her back, worried.

"Cut it out, Claire," he said, affectionate but firm. "He's going to pop back up any minute, and you are going to get fried."

But Claire was no longer looking at him, eyes focusing over his shoulder just as a noise hit his ears, a scream followed by a sonic-boom explosion, and the sky was lit with a straight pillar of white red orange flame. "What the hell?" Claude shouted, and before he could stop them they were by his side, coming forward to see this new crisis.

They could see him between the cars, Sylar bursting radiation with his hands on his head like it was going to split, the body of Ted Sprague bloody at his feet. Peter understood the situation immediately, with the sharp desperation of disaster—Sylar had taken Ted's power and now he couldn't handle it, was losing it and was going to kill New York.

He felt Katie's hand on his wrist and she was yelling, "Shield, Peter! We have to shield!"

"Shield _where_?" he yelled back, and she knew immediately what he meant, hadn't taken this eventuality into account when they'd created their master plan. If they were to throw the two-hundred-foot shield that they'd intended it would encompass everyone, all the people that they'd loved going up in ash with no chance of reaching safety in time. But if they threw a smaller shield it would only protect them and not the glorious brash city full of loudness and life and _people_, the ones they'd seen who hadn't evacuated because they were _New Yorkers_, dammit, and they didn't run away and now would die for it.

There was only a split second for him to make the hardest decision of his life, tearing him in two halves like medieval torture. The city or them—humanity or them. Either one would leave him dead himself, lifeless, destroyer of life, and there was no good option or anything approaching a good option. Point zero seven percent. Eight thousand people. Or them. Block in or block out.

He should have known the decision he would make, had to make, and he made it with the knowledge that it would never be a regret, or rather regret he could deal with opposed to regret that would eat him alive. "Shield around them!" he yelled to Katie over the growing roar of radiation, the destruction sweeping closer. "Around us and them, nothing else, do you understand me?"

She responded by grabbing onto him and lacing her fingers through his, blue shields going up from their intertwined hands, around the people they loved who were falling back, clinging to each other with the knowledge of how close death was beating down on them and how hungrily it wanted to tear into them. Peter tried not to listen to their cries, had to concentrate on saving their lives, holding the shields that couldn't possibly hold, not against the terrible storm of nuclear chaos that was battering against them. He clung to Katie and in some part of his mind he knew they were screaming, could feel his nose bleeding and his ears, torn apart by millimeters as the forces of a nuclear missile pressed against their shields, and his vision went black, white, red with pain as he bit straight through his lip, and it couldn't hold, they couldn't hold—

And then there was silence.

For a long time, Peter didn't dare look up, knew that he couldn't stand the sight of charred skeletons that meant friends and failure. He simply sat with his forehead resting on Katie's, refusing to move forward in time until he was sure that he could take it. Finally he began to move, pulling his fingers out from hers with some difficulty, feeling like they'd been cemented into this position and never meant to change. He turned his head with fated foreboding and saw the one sight that could keep him sane—Mr. Bennet and Claude, Jonathan and _Claire_ safe and alive, huddled in broken heaps like refugees but alive, saved.

He tried not to look past them but couldn't help it, couldn't stop himself from seeing the rest, the consequences like a bullet to the head. Beyond their small circle of undestroyed green was gray and black as far as he could see, city burned back to shining obsidian scabland. Piles of ash swirled and sifted in the wind where there used to be buildings and streets and people and life, scorched sterilized earth that was still hot to the touch. He saw the frames of buildings far away like skeletons, looming hostile broken things like gravestones telling of what used to be, and the _smell—_acrid, acid, burning inside his mouth with the tang of charred flesh.

Before he knew it he was on his hands and knees, retching, and Katie's hands were on his head and someone else's arms were slipping around him, holding him still. He looked up into blue eyes—it was Claire, the only part of this he knew he would never regret, possibly worth a whole city and then some.

"It's all right," Katie said soothingly. "We did it."

_Did _whathe wanted to say. _Destroyed the whole city? We sure did, _that_ was a responsible choice. _"They're dead," he said. "Don't you understand? _They're all dead._"

"_I'm_ not dead," Claire told him firmly, "and let me tell you, I appreciate it."

He mumbled something confused and pulled away from them, getting to his feet. As soon as he stood he knew it was a mistake, suddenly hit all at once by the energy he'd spent that he didn't have to spend, the gaping black-hole extent of his exhaustion. The world folded in on him and went abruptly, completely black.

---

Peter opened his eyes to a slightly less devastating view, a ceiling and walls that were anchors to normality that he hadn't expected to see again so soon. He propped himself carefully up on his arms and looked around, taking in the gutted room that surrounded him, blackened and crumbling like the building had been on fire. Scattered around the space were the five survivors, bright spots against the wreckage. They were engaged in various self-sufficient busy activities, shifting bedding, trying to start a fire, but when he started moving their eyes all came to him. They were conscious of his motions but less twitchy than before, less paranoid with quite simply nothing to be afraid of anymore.

He stood and turned to the window, looking out on the vast expanse of wasted metropolis, coughing already from inhaled ash. _I did this_, he thought numbly, and it made him think the end of the world even if it was only the end of a city, the end of his world and its foundations. It looked like a burned forest, all black vertical skeletons reaching to the sky to get away from the earth, stretching for anywhere that wasn't here, and he sympathized. _I don't want to be here_, he thought. _I don't want to be in this place that I killed. I am so selfish it makes me want to die._

He felt Claire come up behind him, the specialized glow of her sweet charisma and her hand on his arm. "Hi," she said simply.

"Where are we?" he asked, because it was the easiest of all the thousand questions he had, the least painful.

"Somewhere in east Manhattan," she told him. "This was the first building we found that didn't seem likely to collapse. We found some food in a store with concrete walls, and Claude had a lighter in his pocket, but there's not much that hasn't been destroyed. Our phones are all out because of the electromagnetic pulse, my dad said, so we can't contact anyone, but I'm sure someone will come soon. We can survive until they do. We're okay"

"I'm finding it difficult to see what's 'okay' about this situation," Peter said, his voice crushed with guilt and heavy mortality.

Claire took his shoulders and turned him around so that he faced the room, forcing him to look on the people he'd saved. Claude was in the corner, trying to light a fire like he was the first man, like he was Prometheus with a driving desire for the flames. Mr. Bennet, hard-lined and unbreakable and seeming barely affected by the worst disaster in history. Jonathan laying out blankets like he did it every day, having lived through so much and used to the dark by now, willing to keep living even through this. Katie, more beautiful than ever with the edge of grit in her sharp-set jaw and the ash streaked over her face. And Claire beside him, somehow so special and important, so bright and he loved her so much, would sacrifice ten more cities for her and know that he made the right decision.

"We're still alive," she told him.

"That's not much."

She looked at him and she was hope, youth and stubbornness with an eye to the future even though the present was gone.

"It's enough."

_---FIN---_

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Well, there we have it—a sad ending and a happy ending (as far as 'happy' goes in "Heroes" :) it's happi_er_, at least), pick your preference. Thanks for the integrity of your feedback and the push to do better. I love every one of you!


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